Mastodawn

mcc Oct 9, 2024

I think I just vaulted over the line between "WordPress is too much of a maintenance burden, I want to move away" to "I need to stop using WordPress. Now."

https://tldr.nettime.org/@tante/113277490070161595

tante (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image When logging into Wordpress.org (login.wordpress.org) you have to confirm that you are not affiliated with WPEngine. While this looks petty and childish it's another sign the Wordpress is in the hands of people who can't find less destructive ways to handle their fucking midlife crisis.

tldr.nettime

mcc Oct 9, 2024

How likely is it we could see a fork of the WordPress.org updates/plugins backend? At least some of the wordpress.org features are negatives to me anyway so I'd be okay with losing them (the "news" page contains information I don't care about, and it appears to be leaking my IP/location to Automattic every time I open my personal WP admin page). But the plugin repository is kind of hard to work without.

mcc Oct 9, 2024

What's really worrisome to me is whether CEO Matt's errattic-ness starts to impact SimpleNote. I don't really like WP; it's just something I used in my twenties that now I can't get rid of. But SimpleNote is very possibly my favorite piece of software in the world at this moment, my one critical-path cloud app that never "enshittified". If you've been following this account, you may have noticed I come to hate software very easily. I really honestly like SimpleNote. And it's owned by Automattic.

mcc Oct 10, 2024

So I was reading this article (h/t @ernie)

https://www.404media.co/wordpress-checkbox-login-wp-engine/

and I hit this kinda jawdropper of, sorry to link the bad place, a tweet:

https://twitter.com/JavierCasares/status/1843963052183433331

Where someone describes being banned from wordpress.org for asking questions about the "affiliated with WP Engine" checkbox. Note that's a thread, which neither the 404media post nor probably the Twitter website will show you, and there are followups beyond that one screenshot. I assure you they were reasonable and calmly stated

‘The Community Is In Chaos:’ WordPress.org Now Requires You Denounce Affiliation With WP Engine To Log In

WordPress.org users are forced to confirm they are not "affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise" before registering a new account or logging in.

404 Media

Or in summary https://bird.gmem.ca/@arch_ebooks/statuses/01J9T9SGTN381KK54B9QXK0V7Q

Post by arch_ebooks, @[email protected]

CW: markov chain nonsense

bird.gmem.ca

mcc Oct 10, 2024

Several people seem to have been banned from wordpress.org for just taking part in that Slack discussion screenshotted above. This is really bad, given one of the foundational premises of WordPress is that it's safe to use open source software that partially depends on network services controlled by a single company! I want to make jokes about how we've moved from "CEO meltdown" tropes to "forum admin meltdown" tropes but I think making jokes about "Matt" might obscure that this is Actually Bad

mcc Oct 10, 2024

There are people somewhere whose livelihoods depend on this piece of software working smoothly!

Glenn Fleishman Oct 10, 2024

@mcc He’s trying to be Musk for no reason I can understand.

Aslak Raanes Oct 10, 2024

@glennf @mcc I suspect the reason is money. Maybe buying Tumblr (or something else) was a bit too much? https://mastodon.hccp.org/@igb/113281273494369456

Ian Brown :verified: (@[email protected])

@[email protected] rumor is debt calls are squeezing Matt so he’s looking to juice revenue.

Mastodon

mcc Oct 10, 2024

@aslakr @glennf I think people seem really confused about which of the things Elon Musk did that actually made him money

Glenn Fleishman Oct 10, 2024

@aslakr @mcc @igb If that’s what’s happening, he could be in real trouble relative to the non-profit status of the .org and his actions around it. I wonder what, if any, legal advice he’s ignoring. Just weird to watch a pillar of the internet implode (WP not Matt).

Aslak Raanes Oct 10, 2024

@glennf @mcc @igb Somehow it seems to be about money, whether it's debt or not growing fast enough https://medium.com/@kelliepeterson/what-is-the-wordpress-v-wp-engine-drama-really-about-3a82a54e7553

What is the WordPress v WP Engine Drama Really About?

In the David vs. Goliath tale that Matt Mullenweg is spinning in his battle against WP Engine, one of his major criticisms is that WP Engine is backed by the private equity firm Silver Lake, which…

Medium

Carl Muckenhoupt Oct 10, 2024

@mcc Well, wait. The way you describe this, you make it sound like it's affecting the wordpress software, not just the wordpress.org website and the resources hosted there. I put my blog on a self-hosted instance precisely to make it less vulnerable to this sort of nonsense. Are you saying it's still dependent on wordpress.org in some way?

javi Oct 10, 2024

self-hosted sites still phone home for updates: WordPress core, plugins, themes, etc. WordPress.org controls that. You can handle everything by hand and just ignore wp.org, but it would be a painful and recurrent work to keep your site updated & secure

Blog Tool, Publishing Platform, and CMS - WordPress.org

Open source software which you can use to easily create a beautiful website, blog, or app.

WordPress.org

mcc Oct 10, 2024

@javi @CarlMuckenhoupt also im reasonably certain that at least one core plugin— akismet— developed by automattic requires an api key from WordPress dot org

Dan Cassidy 🦌Oct 10, 2024

@mcc I find it incredible that a whole community of people have chosen to make their livelihoods dependent on a notoriously insecure piece of software written in PHP and somehow that's not the disaster, the disaster is one guy having a hissy fit.

mcc Oct 10, 2024

@whimsy I was young and I was like "well, at least it isn't Ruby on Rails"

Dan Cassidy 🦌Oct 10, 2024

@mcc it wasn't intended as a personal dig, especially since I assume you're not actually literally dependent on wordpress for your livelihood, but I hear you

Dan Cassidy 🦌Oct 10, 2024

@mcc I mean relying on wordpress even for things that aren't important is further than I would go, but that is more out of a form of long term laziness: not wanting to deal with problems in the future. But there's lots of other software that I use for not important stuff that is of very poor quality but it doesn't harm me in any meaningful way if it breaks.

Ratsnake Games 🔞Oct 10, 2024

@mcc i'm currently in the process of moving my blog (hosted on wordpress dot com) to a different software and a self-hosted server, would you be interested in a writeup of my experience once it's done?

mcc Oct 10, 2024

@ratsnakegames yes

Ratsnake Games 🔞Oct 11, 2024

@mcc https://hit-to-key.net/posts/2024-10-10-migration/

Blog Migration and Changes

You might notice that this website looks a bit different now. There’s a reason for that: Thanks to the current ongoing drama around Wordpress.com, Automattic, and its competitors, I no longer felt confident in having my website hosted there, and frankly, I didn’t feel confident using a self-hosted Wordpress instance either. This post will give you a quick rundown of the changes, and then a somewhat longer ramble about the new tech stack, and my experience upgrading.

Batichi Oct 18, 2024

@mcc Do you (or anyone reading this) have an out of the box alternative to WP?
It was very accessible for less techie people which is why it got so spread out - but as someone who just needs a website for portfolio/webcomic stuff I'd love to know if there's something else I could migrate to in the future.

mcc Oct 18, 2024

@batichi If I had such an alternative, I would already be using it. :(

The two things I am currently looking at are:

- ClassicPress— fork of an older version of WordPress— since I have limited feature needs, may be attractive for less churn and less dependence on the wordpress company (?)
- Ghost— I know nothing about this— I just know everyone's recommending it

Batichi Oct 18, 2024

@mcc that's kinda what I was afraid of. WordPress is very well known and has a lot of dev support. My host is 3rd party and I donno when Matt is going to flip on that too.

neocat_flag_pan

@batichi @mcc well there are other alright cms, e.g. drupal, typo3 or joomla that have a similar featureset that might be worth checking out.

@mcc i can't get over how perfect my markov chain is sometimes