All posts filed under: Brands

The ACF>SCF ‘fork’ and legal risk

Published by Richard Best

What the… Just when the community thought things couldn’t get more disruptive – because they’re already mighty disruptive – they have. Automattic’s CEO has forked (or purported to fork) the incredibly popular Advanced Custom Fields plugin on the WordPress.org plugins repository, calling the new version ‘Secure Custom Fields’. Advanced Custom Fields is a WP Engine plugin (WP Engine acquired it from Delicious Brains in 2022), so no surprises as to why he has done this. Freedom of speech Before I proceed, let me say something of freedom of speech. I anticipate (rightly or wrongly) that MM/Automattic’s defence to some of the allegations against it in WP Engine’s court filing will be premised on first amendment / freedom of speech grounds. Fair enough. By contrast, we are seeing people in the WordPress community, who are exercising their right to freedom of speech to comment on what they’re seeing unfold, being shut out of WordPress.org communities, Slack groups, and Twitter/X feeds, or otherwise being spoken to with hostility, even when they are trying to help. That doesn’t …

WordPress-related business brands: protect and do no harm

Published by Richard Best

The significance of WordPress-related brands As I’ve noted in an earlier post, as WordPress has evolved and become more popular, more and more businesses have sprung up in what someone referred to the other day as “the WordPress marketplace”. In addition to Automattic, there are: theme shops: think Array, Elegant Themes, StudioPress, WooThemes, ThemeForest, Themezilla and (one of my minimalist favourites) Elmastudio, among countless others; plugin and app shops: think Rocketgenius’ Gravity Forms, Yoast’s WordPress SEO Premium, the impressive array of WPMU DEV plugins, iThemes’ BackupBuddy, Gravity Wiz, CodeCanyon, Conductor, Reactor by AppPresser, VelocityPage and Pippins Plugins (whose site, I’ve just noticed, has had a super redesign), again among many others; WordPress designers (too many to even start naming); WordPress coding shops: think WerkPress and Envato Studio; WordPress news sites: think WPTavern, again among others; WordPress business consultancy, support services and fora: think Chris Lema, Matt Report Pro, WP Elevation, Post Status Membership Club, WP Site Care and WP Curve; and WordPress security services (like Sucuri). All of these businesses have distinctive brands, the importance …