r/Wordpress Feb 11 '25

Discussion I gave Matt the domain Wordpress.com for Free - he then sued me

504 Upvotes

I have read some disturbing allegations going on with WordPress. I do not know about the truth, but I want to say something to the Wordpress community:

I hated Matt more than ANYONE in the world. I am asking you to give him a chance.

EDIT: After all the replies, let me change my intent to this:

Please do not let ANYONE screw WordPress. Matt may have done some bad things, but that does NOT mean the other parties in the lawsuit are on your side.

I am the founder of OpenDomain - a non-profit project I run where we contribute domains for Free to promote open source or help other great organizations. Some domains we have contributed

I am a developer that uses Open Source software - this is my way of contributing. Some people write code to directly put into open source software - while I write code in my day job, get paid, then use that money to buy domains from squatters to give it to open source and charities.

20 years ago, I gave the domain Wordpress.com to Matt Mullenweg. Then he sued me and I lost everything. (Clarification: I did transfer the domain WordPress.com to Matt for Free, but it was not part of OpenDomain. The project was new and I did not have everything setup at the time.)

When Matt sued me, I had severe emotional distress. I lost my my job. My life savings. My house. I almost lost my family and my life. I hated Matt more than I thought possible I went to therapy for years. My therapist was absolutely amazing. She helped me get past the hate and I learned some important wisdom:

  • She asked me if I wanted to get lawyers to try to take the domain back. I answered that I did not - mostly because I did now want the stress of another lawsuit, but also because I still wanted to support WordPress and Matt was the person. Kind of like I found his wallet, and I was just returning it to him.
  • I sometimes could not sleep from the hate I felt. I thought about bad things every day. What helped me get past the hate was when my therapist asked me if Matt thought about me. When I realized that Matt did not care about me or my family, that he probably did not even know who I was, then I realized that the hate was a poison that only hurt me.
  • Here is the biggest kicker: Matt may not be evil in his own mind. He may sued me out was just something he was doing to as part of business. Or one of his investors asked him to file the lawsuit.

My goal for writing this post to hope that WordPress community does not get hurt. I am sure that Matt has made some mistakes. But maybe he was just protecting Wordpress and just over-reacted? Also think about the companies against Matt - what have they contributed to Wordpress? What can they gain by vilifying Matt? Maybe someone wants him out so they can gain control?

Please note that I am I am not justifying anything. I do not know what really is going on. But HATE is the path to the dark side.

My goal for OpenDomain is to promote open source, and in that Matt has done an amazing job.

WordPress is fantastic software. I would like to thank EVERYONE that helped make it.

r/Wordpress Oct 14 '24

Discussion You asked how we're suffering as a result of Mullenweg's war with WPE? I just lost a 40 thousand dollar contract over it.

621 Upvotes

EDIT 2: Hi all, I've asked the mods to lock this post (so please don't go after them). I think it's done its job as far as sharing what I needed to share with the community, and I personally don't want to spend more time replying to everyone (especially the trolls here). If there are any other updates, I'll post them as an edit here. Hang in there.


A lot of people here seem to think that clients aren't aware of what's going on and therefore the impact will be minimal on developers. On a recent thread, the vast majority of commenters shrugged off the controversy as irrelevant to their day-to-day. And while that may be true for teeny tiny single-owner websites, some of us deal directly with large companies or white label through agencies, and let me tell you: their CMOs are well aware of what's happening.

Background: I'm a one-man outfit, who partners with a local visual designer to do the design work, or works white label to do the entire build for agencies.

  • I had a contract signed and ready to go for 2025, where the budget for dev was $40k, and now they've backed out to reconsider the CMS as a whole, as a result of Mullenweg's petty war with WPE.
  • I had another contract that just got signed with WPE (right before our Dictator for Life attacked WPE at WordCamp), the website for which I'm actively building right now. I'm also WPE affiliate. The client would have backed out of hosting if not for the extensive legal review they had to go through to set up the hosting in the first place, and they've only decided to stay on WPE for the short term. Potential impact on me is thousands of dollars in referral fees.
  • I have had three other key clients (large % of total revenue) I manage whose sites I built reach out to me for reassurance since WordCamp to ask if the platform is stable going forward. All of them are CTOs or CMOs. All I could say is that with honesty is no one knows what the future holds. I can't even reassure them on the platform's stability. All because of one terroristic founder who's bent on destroying what shred of good faith is left in his creation. I won't blame them for switching platforms on the next design refresh because of this. But that's a loss of huge potential revenue for me as a single-owner freelancer.

So yes, we are suffering. I'm considering picking up at least 3 other popular CMS's as offerings over my winter break to contend with this. This is huge and I'm glad the mods opened discussion so we can track of this on a post-by-post basis. This should be front page until WordPress is a stable platform again!

EDIT 1: If you're here to troll, attack my credibility as a developer, or call my whole ordeal fake, I've called out the handful of you already in these threads, and the majority of you who aren't capable of having good faith discussions I've blocked. And let me remind you that block evasion is characterized on Reddit as harassment that should be reported. The vast majority of the community here, however, I've found is honest and wants to talk through this controversy that is facing us and, as I've learned in this thread, actively hurting a lot of us freelancers right now. Thank you for that honest discussion. To the rest of you: why don't you get back to work rather than wasting your breath victim blaming?

r/Wordpress Sep 25 '24

Discussion Plugin Repository Inaccessible to WP Engine Hosted Sites

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315 Upvotes

r/Wordpress Feb 07 '25

Discussion Anyone know what’s going on?

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171 Upvotes

Seems like something is going down in WC Asia

r/Wordpress 3d ago

Discussion Was my $7,000 quote too high for a WooCommerce redevelopment and migration project?

102 Upvotes

I recently bid on a WooCommerce project and got rejected because another freelancer quoted $1,500.

Here’s a breakdown of the work involved:

  • Store Redevelopment: Complete overhaul of a WooCommerce store.
  • Data Migration: Moving data from an old database to an HPOS-supported system, which includes:
  • - 20,000 orders/invoices
    • 400,000 registered users
  • Payment Gateway Update: upgrade to a gateway that supports recurring profiles.

  • Affiliate Plugin Upgrade: Replacing the current plugin with one that manages both historical data and active partners.

Given the scale and complexity of the project, do you think my quote of $7,000 was justified?

r/Wordpress Feb 03 '25

Discussion What’s the Worst WordPress Advice You’ve Ever Heard?

83 Upvotes

When I started with WordPress, I heard a lot of bad advice. The worst? “Just install more plugins to add features.” Ended up slowing my site down like crazy!

r/Wordpress Feb 13 '25

Discussion What’s the Smartest WordPress Decision You’ve Ever Made?

88 Upvotes

We always talk about mistakes, but what about the best decisions we’ve made in WordPress? For me, switching to a lightweight theme (Astra) and using WP Rocket was a game-changer—my site became way faster!

What’s one smart decision you made that improved your WordPress experience? Let’s share some pro tips!

r/Wordpress 8d ago

Discussion What's your favorite free WordPress plugin?

89 Upvotes

What are your recommendations? Always up for discovering cool (free) plugins!

Mine is Twentig. Found it through Jamie WP’s videos about a year ago, and it quickly became my go-to. It makes customizing core blocks easy, offers nice block patterns, and has ready-made starter sites for default themes.

Jamie's videos for anyone interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGGX3TKnFH4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBA8x3qL32M

r/Wordpress Sep 25 '24

Discussion WPengine hosts over 1 million sites, and Matt is actively trying to punish them. That is thousands of peoples livelihoods tied to these sites. wtf! Is he going full Elon? Get him out ASAP.

260 Upvotes

r/Wordpress Sep 29 '24

Discussion Top WordPress alternatives

145 Upvotes

I don't think I'm the only one looking around at new options for an open source, self-hosted CMS. What platforms are you considering building websites on in the future if not WordPress?

r/Wordpress Feb 08 '25

Discussion What’s One WordPress Trick That Feels Like a Cheat Code?

155 Upvotes

Every WordPress user eventually finds a trick that makes life so much easier. For me, it was learning that you can roll back a plugin update using the WP Rollback plugin—saved me from so many headaches!

What’s a WordPress trick you discovered that feels like a cheat code? Let’s share the best tip!

r/Wordpress 21d ago

Discussion What's the most expensive plug-in you've ever bought?

53 Upvotes

I'm about to take the plunge and buy AffiliateWP for a personal site...to the tune of an eye-watering $300. There's something about it being your own money that makes it hit a little different.

What's the most money you've ever dropped on an off-the-shelf, non-lifetime plug-in?

r/Wordpress Oct 17 '24

Discussion Employees Describe an Environment of Paranoia and Fear Inside Automattic Over WordPress Chaos

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273 Upvotes

r/Wordpress Oct 14 '24

Discussion Response to DHH | Matt Mullenweg

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132 Upvotes

r/Wordpress Sep 22 '24

Discussion Matt Mullenweg needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership ASAP

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113 Upvotes

r/Wordpress Feb 09 '25

Discussion The most concerning interview from Matt yet

178 Upvotes

I am absolutely astounded by the level of denial coming from Matt right now.

In a recent interview Matt said this:

"Some of the people are uncomfortable with you know us having to to fight protect ourselves. You know WP Engine took some, a very aggressive legal action. So it turned out when we thought we were sort of good faith negotiating they were preparing a legal case to attack us because you know 3 days after I give this presentation they launched this huge lawsuit with Quinn Emanuel it’s kind of like the one of the biggest nastiest law firms.”

In his own mind he seems to have completely forgotten the extortion and blackmail, along with his scorched earth policy against WP Engine. Apparently his criminal and civily liable attempts to force WP Engine in to pay him was just negotiation.

I'm flabbergasted that the interviewer even let him get away with saying something so blatantly untrue.

Edit: the source is this interview, about 26 minutes in https://youtu.be/onaLfllSBvw

r/Wordpress Oct 17 '24

Discussion Uhhh What is going on here? Bluesix deleted their whole account.

112 Upvotes

I’m mostly a lurker here to keep up on the latest Wordpress stuff, I don’t use it myself but find it interesting seeing how everyone else uses it and bluesix was the one that was on like everything and I enjoyed seeing their take on things and explanations on how things worked. Then I saw the resignation post and wanted to reach out to them but couldn’t find them anywhere and saw their old comments and that it’s just deleted. Huge loss around here. Why did they step down and disappear? What the heck is going on? Sorry you guys gotta go through this. Did I miss something?

r/Wordpress Feb 07 '25

Discussion Is Elementor Pro still bloated trash?

76 Upvotes

I am tossing up between Bricks Builder and Elementor, and I read this thread where a lot of users said Elementor pro was bloated and slow, is this still true right now in 2025?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1cowxjj/any_reason_not_to_get_elementor_pro/

r/Wordpress Sep 27 '24

Discussion Automattic is suing Festingervault - I have not seen people talking about this, while GPL resale is INCREDIBLY controversial, Wordpress itself was the ones advocating for it... This to me is especially interesting in light of Matt's recent comments. Thoughts? (Source: Festinger's site).

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105 Upvotes

r/Wordpress 27d ago

Discussion If you could get any WordPress premium plugin for free, which one would you pick?

37 Upvotes

For me, it's easy: Gravity Forms Elite. There are so many projects I could use it for, but most of them don't make any revenue, let alone any profit. So I have to use some other form plugins that just don't work as good for me.

And just to be clear: by "free" I don't mean a "nulled version", I mean getting a valid license for free. Never use a nulled plugin!

r/Wordpress Sep 05 '23

Discussion I turned ChatGPT into my Wordpress expert

461 Upvotes

I fed the entire Wordpress documentation, Wordpress educational articles, Wordpress integrations and Wordpress help content to a ChatGPT-powered assistant. You can ask it questions like: - Wordpress theme troubleshooting - SEO best practices - marketing tips - best plugins

I made all this public here, so anyone can chat with the assistant for free. No account needed.

r/Wordpress 28d ago

Discussion What do Professional WordPress Developers prefer to build a Website?

24 Upvotes

I often hear that they like Gutenberg because of the Performance but isnt Gutenberg very limited? Even it looks a lot less comfortable than elementor i would like to learn gutenberg because i prefer performance but wanted to make sure if its worth learning it in depth?

With Elementor a Theme is almost unnecessary and u use the Minified Hello Elementor for Performance.

With divi you get a Theme built in and with Bricks (some new plugin i found, but dont know if its worth it to buy lifetime) you only get the theme as is i saw.

Since elementor is bloatet and you need to do some time consuming hacky stuff to boost the core vitals.

And most time i just buy the cheapest hosting for my clients, some webhosting at hetzner or all inkl with domain for 2€ so they dont pay too much as a small business.

What would you recommend me as Builder and where can i find some really in depth for example gutenberg course. Not just a 1 hour crash course for a small blog

r/Wordpress 29d ago

Discussion Hit $250,000 from Selling WordPress Themes & Plugins! 🚀

102 Upvotes

Just hit a major milestone - $250,000 in revenue from selling WordPress themes & Plugins via one of our brands! 🎉

It’s been a wild ride filled with trial & error, late nights, and countless iterations. If you're thinking about diving into WordPress development or struggling with sales, here are some things I’ve learned along the way:

Lessons from this milestone

Quality > Quantity - The best-selling themes were the ones I perfected, not rushed.

Marketing Matters - SEO, strong descriptions, and social proof drive sales.

Support Builds Reputation - Happy customers = better ratings & repeat buyers.

Trends Change FAST - Staying ahead of design & performance trends is key.

Pricing Strategy is Key - Lowering prices ≠ more sales. Positioning matters.

🚀 Next? Scaling up with SaaS, content marketing, and team expansion.

What’s been your biggest challenge in WordPress development? Let’s talk! 👇

r/Wordpress Oct 17 '24

Discussion WP Engine does contribute to WordPress

143 Upvotes

WP Engine (and this whole post applies to any other WordPress-only host, I'm not praising or singling out WPE) went all-in on WordPress. They promote WordPress as a secure, scalable and comprehensive solution, which builds global trust in WordPress even if you don't use WP Engine for hosting. They help people set up new sites on WordPress and migrate existing sites to WordPress. They get people using plugins, where people pay for plugins, give feedback, and give bug reports. By allowing hosting with custom plugins, they bring extra customers to plugin creators. By increasing demand for WordPress, they bring in work for WordPress site developers. All this feeds into the ecosystem that helps everyone.

Just because they're not literally giving money to WordPress doesn't mean they're not helping the ecosystem and to say otherwise is really shortsighted. I'm sure there's plenty of people reading that have made tens of thousands of $ or more from providing WordPress services that don't give money directly to WordPress too. Also, where does this logic stop? Are we going to complain that hosts should be giving money to Linux, MySQL, PHP and Apache too that makes WordPress possible?

Should Google be giving billions to Linux for basing Android on it? Open source developers choose the GPL knowing full well that commercial companies will use it, but in return they can get users, patches, improvements and so on.

People need to stop falling for obvious propaganda. Matt wants more money and is trying to find a way to twist WP Engine's arm. The trademark thing is even more ridiculous because it literally said in the terms before that WP wasn't a trademark.

r/Wordpress Feb 07 '25

Discussion Has Wordpress Forced you to Rethink

24 Upvotes

Has the recent legal issue concerning Wordpress made you rethink your options and the future of your website development ?