Wordpress Drama

[RobinHood]

Matt making money off of Wordpress recommended hosts is what is not confirmed,

I mean, it does clearly state they get a cut from affiliate referrals on the recommended host page

If you do decide to go with one of the hosts below and click through from this page, some will donate a portion of your fee back—so you can have a great host and support WordPress.org at the same time.

They're notes at the bottom are pretty funny

Host Feedback​

We’re committed to helping create a wholesome and hassle-free WordPress hosting environment. If you feel there are issues with one of the hosts listed here, please send a note to hosting dash feedback at this domain. If the situation warrants we’ll work with you and your host on a solution.

Note before contacting us: Please don’t send us legal takedown orders or threats, we don’t actually host every WordPress blog in the world. If you don’t understand that, you probably shouldn’t be sending legal notices anyway.

Be Listed on This Page​

We’ll be looking at this list several times a year, so keep an eye out for us re-opening the survey for hosts to submit themselves for inclusion. Listing is completely arbitrary, but includes criteria like: contributions to WordPress.org, size of customer base, ease of WP auto-install and auto-upgrades, avoiding GPL violations, design, tone, historical perception, using the correct logo, capitalizing WordPress correctly, not blaming us if you have a security issue, and up-to-date system software.

 

[eva2000]

Was he actually kicked out? I'm pretty sure that this is the first time that he has worded it that way specifically. I do not know if this more details are coming forward, or if Matt is revising things to fit his narrative. He has definitely had personal beef with one specific person who is part of Silver Lake, so it could very well be true.

Yeah makes more sense now.

Matt trying to lure away WPEngine customers https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/s/8trcu74IUh

 

[Forsaken]

I mean, it does clearly state they get a cut from affiliate referrals on the recommended host page



They're notes at the bottom are pretty funny

I'd have to find it, but all those hosts are owned or partnered with Automattic currently I believe.

Yeah makes more sense now.

Matt trying to lure away WPEngine customers https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/s/8trcu74IUh

This has been going on for a few weeks now, but contacting clients out of nowhere like that is shady.

 

[Arantor]

Also I was reminded by another thread, Gravatar is a service also provided by our good friend Matt Mullenweg at Automattic. I wonder if this becomes a paid-for service, and/or if this otherwise needs monetisation since I’m fairly sure part of the problem at the heart of this is Matt needs money…

 

[Forsaken]

Also I was reminded by another thread, Gravatar is a service also provided by our good friend Matt Mullenweg at Automattic. I wonder if this becomes a paid-for service, and/or if this otherwise needs monetisation since I’m fairly sure part of the problem at the heart of this is Matt needs money…

Would be difficult to monetize as there are competing services that are better now; Gravatar is just widely adopted because it was one of the earliest.

 

[Arantor]

You’re not suggesting that facts and rational thought will enter this particular story, are you?

 

[RobinHood]

Also I was reminded by another thread, Gravatar is a service also provided by our good friend Matt Mullenweg at Automattic. I wonder if this becomes a paid-for service, and/or if this otherwise needs monetisation since I’m fairly sure part of the problem at the heart of this is Matt needs money…

I was reminded about this service last week when setting up a blog article for someone on Wordpress.

You can't even upload a basic photo as an avatar for the author meta box on Wordpress, it's such garbage. I don't want to have to register with a 3rd party service or download a plugin just to upload a damn profile photo in 2024

It's a blogging platform and you can't even upload a photo of the blog author out of the box?!

 

[Mr Lucky]

It's a blogging platform and you can't even upload a photo of the blog author out of the box?!

OTOH it’s free, so you can always get back what you paid for it

 

[Arantor]

I don't want to have to register with a 3rd party service

They will tell you it's not exactly a 3rd party service, given that it is owned and run by the same company that gave you the software download.

 

[RobinHood]

They will tell you it's not exactly a 3rd party service, given that it is owned and run by the same company that gave you the software download.

You have to register an account on another website just to use the built in avatar feature, it’s bonkers

 

[Arantor]

Yes, but it's a global avatar - a whole bunch of other services use the same thing, including this very forum software.

 

[RobinHood]

Doesn't matter if it's an intergalactic avatar, you should be able to upload your own image, just like this very forum software.

Wordpress has an entire media gallery for uploading and managing media for crying out loud. After seeing all the recent drama play out though I can kind of see why it's like this. If Gravatar is also one of Matt's pet projects there's no incentive to give users basic avatar upload functionality , the likes of which has been standard for well over a decade in other software, because it will only draw traffic away from one of his other services.

Matt clearly doesn't give a **** about the end users, as demonstrated by the damage he's caused this last month. So nerfing the avatar feature for the benefit of Gravatar and not improving basic user experience is not surprising any more.

 

[Forsaken]

Doesn't matter if it's an intergalactic avatar, you should be able to upload your own image, just like this very forum software.

Wordpress has an entire media gallery for uploading and managing media for crying out loud. After seeing all the recent drama play out though I can kind of see why it's like this. If Gravatar is also one of Matt's pet projects there's no incentive to give users basic avatar upload functionality , the likes of which has been standard for well over a decade in other software because it will only draw traffic away from one of his other services.

Matt clearly doesn't give a **** about the end users, as demonstrated by the damage he's caused this last month. So nerfing the avatar feature for the benefit of Gravatar and not basic user experience is not surprising any more.

The media gallery is terrible, and people have been requesting something better for years... The official response has been said to try a plugin.

But they were able to focus on that cluster**** Gutenberg, because Matt wanted it to compete with Wix and similar competitors.

 

[RobinHood]

I agree it's very flawed, and under specked for managing and organising the amount of media that many wordpress sites need these days. The point is it's still there though, and Wordpress does handle processing images perfectly well, so there's no excuse to not allow uploading images for user profiles.

 

[Arantor]

Doesn't matter if it's an intergalactic avatar, you should be able to upload your own image, just like this very forum software.

Wordpress has an entire media gallery for uploading and managing media for crying out loud. After seeing all the recent drama play out though I can kind of see why it's like this. If Gravatar is also one of Matt's pet projects there's no incentive to give users basic avatar upload functionality , the likes of which has been standard for well over a decade in other software, because it will only draw traffic away from one of his other services.

Matt clearly doesn't give a **** about the end users, as demonstrated by the damage he's caused this last month. So nerfing the avatar feature for the benefit of Gravatar and not improving basic user experience is not surprising any more.

The whole point is explicitly not to do that, actually. The theory is based on the notion that people recognise avatars before usernames, and having the Gravatar be automatically based off email means wherever you go, there it is. A consistent presence everywhere.

You see, this is because WordPress still thinks of itself as a blog. Comments are enabled by default in every new install (and while you can nerf them, you can’t fully disable the whole thing without an addon) where this philosophy makes more sense. Assuming people actually use the comments functionality, that is… and since folks replying to posts don’t have anywhere to upload to (often they won’t even have an account), no need to give them management features.

 

[RobinHood]

A consistent presence everywhere.

Which makes no sense if you want avatars for the blog authors, not commenters, which is what I'm talking about.

A blog author is site staff, they generally don't have a presense everywhere as a commenter may.

I do get what your saying, and a see the benefit in having the option of a service like gravatar. But It's ridiculously petty and user hostile to literally prohibit a user from uploading an avatar.

 

[Arantor]

It’s a feature they don’t have to build for what amounts to a special case in their mind.

 

[Suzanne O]

Which makes no sense if you want avatars for the blog authors, not commenters, which is what I'm talking about.

A blog author is site staff, they generally don't have a presense everywhere as a commenter may.

I do get what your saying, and a see the benefit in having the option of a service like gravatar. But It's ridiculously petty and user hostile to literally prohibit a user from uploading an avatar.

I used to use wordpress just as a blogging journal.
But now i just use one note.
Got sick of people reporting my blog entries

 

[RobinHood]

There is now an "official" tracker from Automattic with a full downloadable csv list of thousands of domains of sites they say have migrated away from WP Engine

WP Engine Tracker

Tracking how many websites have left WP Engine and found a new home since September 21, 2024.

wordpressenginetracker.com

Twitter link

 

[Arantor]

As if WPE needed more fuel for their injunction. They already added choice quotes from Matt’s TechCrunch appearance to their filing.

See also yesterday’s hilarious announcement from the official WP X account thanking WooCommerce for sponsorship. Given that Automattic is thanking Automattic for sponsorship…