The future of WordPress

The WordPress project is at a crossroads, and what happens in 2025 may well determine its future.

We believe in openness and transparency at Studio 24, so I wanted to share my personal perspective on the current WordPress controversy, which I’ll go into more detail below, and the impact this may have on the industry as a whole.

I want to firstly note we still build on WordPress at Studio 24 and have no immediate plans to change this. We do, however, use multiple CMSs and don’t believe in being restricted to one platform. If you’re worried about your usage of WordPress, or need expert help, please do get in touch.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) by a wide margin. By some accounts it powers over 40% of the web. The 2024 Web Almanac reports that, for websites with an identifiable CMS, WordPress is the most popular choice with 35.6% of websites using it (Wix is next at just 2.8%).

Many people use WordPress because:

it’s fairly easy for content editors to use
people are familiar with it
it has a great reputation for backward compatibility which makes upgrades simple and reliable
there are 1000s of plugins available to extend it
it’s flexible for web developers to build with
and there is a big industry to help develop, host and maintain WordPress sites (the WordPress economy was estimated at $635 billion in 2021)

It’s also Open Source which means the software is free to use and anyone is able to review the code and contribute to the development. The web is built on Open Source and it is a successful model for software development.

These are all very compelling reasons to build websites on WordPress and it’s why at Studio 24, we’ve worked with WordPress for over 10 years.

Where did it come from?

WordPress was first released in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg, the current project lead and owner of company Automattic, and UK developer Mike Little. The software was originally a fork of previous blogging software b2.

Since then WordPress gained popularity as the dominant blogging CMS. It’s been developed by a large number of contributors and over the years it’s become more sophisticated and is used for a wide variety of websites and is now the most popular CMS platform on the web.

Automattic, seen as the company behind WordPress, has developed many services on top of the WordPress platform includinq WP VIP hosting, popular E-Commerce plugin WooCommerce, and also manages the .blog top-level domain name. There are a huge number of useful plugins developed by other businesses and the community, including WordPress specialist hosting company WP Engine’s Advanced Content Fields (ACF) which makes it possible to use custom fields on web pages (an essential part of all WordPress sites built by Studio 24).

Who owns WordPress?

It’s a little complicated. Open Source projects are supposed to be free to use and build on. There are many aspects that make an Open Source project including licensing, code distribution, the project website, governance, and community conferences.

The WordPress core code is licensed under GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) which means anyone can use it, share it and modify it. GPL also states any derived work needs to retain the same license. Copyright in the code remains with the original contributors, of which there are hundreds. The code of WordPress belongs to the community.

The “WordPress” name is owned by WordPress Foundation, a charitable organisation which oversees the WordPress project. Automattic has an exclusive license to use the WordPress name for commercial purposes. In practice, many companies use the word “WordPress” in relation to commercial services.

Matt is on the board of the WordPress Foundation alongside 2 others.

The wordpress.org website is the central website for the WordPress project. It hosts the source code, plugin and theme repository, documentation and all key information about the CMS. Access to wordpress.org is required for WordPress websites to run updates. It is owned by Matt Mullenweg personally.

WordCamp, the official community conference which runs all over the world, is owned and controlled by the WordPress Foundation (individual WordCamps are all organised by volunteers).

What’s the problem?

Since September 2024 Matt Mullenweg, and his company Automattic, have been in dispute with hosting company WP Engine. This all kicked off at WordCamp US when Matt publicly attacked WP Engine in his keynote, claiming they are taking advantage of the freedom of WordPress without contributing enough to the Open Source project, urging people to move away from WP Engine to different hosts. Matt then claimed there is confusion between WP Engine and WordPress and demanded WP Engine pay 8% of their revenue to use the trademark “WordPress.”

Since then, Matt has continued public attacks and blocked access for WP Engine from all wordpress.org resources (this affected all websites hosted with WP Engine). He even went so far as to appropriate the ACF plugin (owned and maintained by WP Engine) and re-publish it under the name “Secure Content Fields”, automatically switching websites over to the new plugin without permission. An act that breaks trust in the WordPress platform and could have future security implications.

The takeover of ACF did not affect those who use the commercial ACF Pro plugin which is distributed directly from WP Engine (all Studio 24 clients use ACF Pro).

WP Engine responded by taking legal action against Matt and Automattic for libel and unfair competition. A preliminary injunction was granted by the court in December 2024 and most of Matt’s actions against WP Engine have been undone. The legal battle is expected to continue and could take years to settle.

There has been public criticism of Matt’s actions. Many community members have called for improvements in the governance of the WordPress project. Unfortunately, Matt has responded by attacking the community, blocking anyone who disagrees with him from contributing to the project, shutting down services and teams within the WordPress project, and generally causing chaos in the WordPress community.

Security and sustainability

At the start of January, there were two concerning incidents.

Security company Patchstack was rejected as a sponsor of WordCamp Europe due to a perceived lack of contributions to WordPress. Patchstack is one of the leading security companies for WordPress and is responsible for around 80% of all security reports to WordPress, a critical service for such a widely used CMS. Matt tweeted that he’d review this decision, but to date this has not happened.

The lead of the Sustainability Team spoke out against Matt’s continued poor behaviour. In retaliation, Matt decided to close down the entire sustainability team and the community Slack channel where work happens.

Both security and sustainability are critical components of a large platform such as WordPress and something we feel very strongly about at Studio 24. Closing the sustainability team, who were planning to implement the draft W3C sustainability guidelines, is a bad decision and one that lowers confidence in WordPress as a serious platform. I urge Matt to reconsider this.

Why does this matter?

WordPress is the leading CMS platform, powering around 40% of the web, so the decisions it takes matter and affect a great many people. The success of WordPress is in large part due to the community and its adoption in the industry, including businesses that build services on top of it.

Attacking a commercial company for selling services on top of WordPress threatens the whole WordPress industry. If every company that uses the WordPress name as part of their business has to pay 8% of revenue it’s likely to drive business away – reducing the long-term health of the platform.

Blocking access to wordpress.org for WordPress websites is clearly a security concern since it blocks updates. While this action has been reversed, it affects trust in the platform.

Blocking individual users from wordpress.org means they can no longer contribute, though some are still trying to in limited ways. This will reduce development time on the project.

Matt’s behaviour against the community does not reflect good leadership or the mission statement of Automattic: “making the web a better place.” Many people in the community contribute important work through sponsored or volunteer time. For example, the plugin review team are volunteers and perform an essential task to ensure new plugins and updates meet standards. As another example Ryan McCue, of Human Made, created the REST API as a volunteer, which is a valuable part of WordPress core.

Bringing the community with you is an essential part of a healthy ecosystem for an Open Source project.

Matt has recently announced Automattic will reduce their contributions to core. This will result in a slower development cycle for WordPress. Not a massive issue at present, since the platform is so stable, but a concern for the future. This may affect other companies who also contribute time, which is more of a worry (there are 28 companies who contribute over 45 hours a month to WordPress at present via sponsored development time for staff).

At the time of publishing, Automattic publicly stated their contributions to WordPress are 43 hours a month (down from a previously stated 3,988 hours).

Good governance

Because the success of an Open Source project is in large part driven by its community, it’s important to have good governance to support this. This is hard to do well, but it is possible.

While dealing with a legal battle is challenging, it is possible to engage with the community and try to build bridges. From the commentary I have read, there is clearly a desire for Matt to do this. But it requires cooperation from Matt and a recognition there needs to be improvements in governance.

Other Open Source CMS projects appear to have good governance models, for example Drupal (PHP) and Wagtail (Python).

What’s going to happen?

WordPress is a huge market, it’s not going to suddenly go away. But this may have a real and lasting impact on the project.

Our clients are government organisations, not-for-profit organisations, charities and businesses. While open source is important and something our clients are keen to support, other factors are more important when selecting a CMS. Things like stability, security, wide adoption in the community, accessibility, sustainability and data privacy are all really important factors.

I don’t expect any immediate changes, but developments over the next year are likely to have a long-lasting impact on the project.

There are many ways this could go:

Matt works with the community and revamps governance of the WordPress project, finding a new way to move WordPress forward for the future. This would be the most positive outcome, though it seems unlikely.
Some key community people come together to fork WordPress. This means there would be an alternative version of WordPress managed by the community, which would have to be published under a different name. As well as the source code, this fork would require an update service, plugin and theme repository. Key challenges include industry adoption, trust, and technical direction. To be successful, I would expect some big names in the WordPress business world need to back this. This is risky and full of challenges but may be better for the long-term.
Matt takes WordPress in a more commercial direction and reduces community involvement. The evolution of the Gutenberg editor appears to be motivated by commercial decisions and has dominated WordPress development over recent years. WordPress itself is likely to always be open source. This will probably result in a smaller market share, but may be more commercially successful for Automattic.

Open Source and business

It’s fair to point out that many Open Source projects have businesses behind them. And businesses need to make money. In Matt’s defence, I can see the clear need for an Open Source project to be financially sustainable as well as meet other project objectives.

From Matt’s September 2024 Keynote, he states Automattic makes around $500 million a year, a similar figure to WP Engine. If he’s unhappy with the commercial return on WordPress I can understand the desire to improve this. But blocking another business from using the software feels uncompetitive to me.

Laravel is a good example of an Open Source project which does this well. It has commercial funding, is clearly building commercial services to get a return, but is committed to building a healthy Open Source community which then directly benefits Laravel the company.

Should I worry about my WordPress site?

In the short term no.

If you use an agency (or WordPress contractor) to manage your WordPress site, you are in a good position to weather any issues that may arise.

If you don’t have a WordPress expert to rely on, I’d recommend you use a hosting company that specialises in WordPress so you have support when you need it.

When you come to redesign your website, take a look at the health of the WordPress ecosystem and make a decision on what’s the best CMS for you.

What are Studio 24 doing?

As a digital agency, we don’t use just one CMS. We have experience with a range of platforms. We’ve also built two CMSs in the past so understand what it takes to build a CMS and what features matter to our clients.

I run an ethical agency and care about good leadership, sustainability, and building a web that works for everyone. From a business perspective, we run a lot of WordPress sites for our clients.

We’ll continue to support and develop on the platform, using our expertise to minimise any impact of these current problems. We’ll continue to watch developments closely and our work will be driven by using the most suitable CMS for our client projects.

We’re committed to sustainability and will continue to make our WordPress sites more sustainable, sharing any knowledge we learn with the community.

I support the non-profit organisation WP Community Collective in their efforts to improve WordPress governance and support an independent open source ecosystem. They are starting to gain traction with generous sponsorship from GoDaddy. If you support this too, take a look at this group.

We also use Craft CMS, a developer-friendly CMS from the well-respected Pixel & Tonic. While it is commercial, this allows Craft to retain its independence and is very affordable.

Interestingly Craft CMS rose from the ashes of a previous CMS, ExpressionEngine (which after faltering has itself been reborn). Software has a history of evolving and moving on – often for the better.