WordPress managed hosting company WP Engine has joined Acquia, Fastly, Gatsby, Netlify, and Pantheon to begin booting Russian companies off their platforms. In addition to the joint protest, each organization has also pledged support to the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), a non-profit that documents internet censorship around the world. “As part of that…
Brian Gardner announced today that WP Engine has acquired his latest project, Frost. In an email sent out to all customers, Gardner said his team had issued refunds to all current customers. The business model is changing, and Frost will be a freely-available project going forward and focus on full site editing. Frost is a…
WP Engine is deepening its investment in headless WordPress with the creation of a new team dedicated to furthering the technology developers rely on when opting for this architecture. The company has hired WPGraphQL creator and maintainer Jason Bahl as part of this new team and will be investing in more engineers and other roles…
On November 11, StudioPress announced an open beta for its Genesis Block Theme. This is a pivotal moment, or at least one moment in a series of significant moments, for adoption of the block editor. Feel free to call me on this in a year or two if it does not pan out. The original…
Managed web hosting company WP Engine launched the new Genesis Pro add-on for customers of its hosting service today. The add-on brings additional block editor features for users who are using a Genesis-based WordPress theme. Genesis is a parent theme developed by StudioPress. WP Engine acquired the theme development company in 2018. Later that year,…
The three-person Block Lab team of Luke Carbis, Ryan Kienstra, and Rob Stinson is joining WP Engine to work on the company’s block editor projects. WP Engine approached the team members after seeing how successful the Block Lab project had grown and made them an offer. The team will be able to continue building projects…
Some WordPress developers and agencies were caught off guard when WP Engine announced it had acquired Flywheel in June last year. Flywheel had quickly become a trusted web hosting company for many that specifically catered to the needs of developers and agencies. For some, they questioned whether such a buyout would change the company culture…
In this episode, Malcolm Peralty and I are joined by Dan Maby, Founder of WP&UP. WP&UP is a non-profit charity based in England that supports and promotes positive mental health in the WordPress Community. Dan explains why he started the charity, what he’s learned and how he manages his own mental health, and how the…
Those who host or manage sites on WP Engine now have a new tool at their disposal. It’s called DevKit, developed by Chris Wiegman and Jason Stallings. DevKit is a WordPress local development environment that includes SSH Gateway access, push and pull deployments to WP Engine, Command Line Interface commands for the Genesis theme framework…
WP Engine has acquired Array Themes and Atomic Blocks from Mike McAlister for an undisclosed amount. McAlister has been developing WordPress themes since 2009. He initially sold his themes on ThemeForest. In 2011, he founded Array Themes. I reached out to McAlister to learn why he chose to be acquired, what excites him most about…
After WP Engine acquired StudioPress in June, the company began investing in expanding the Genesis team. WP Engine is hiring new people to work on the framework and expand support and community activities. On the latest episode of the newly revived StudioPress.fm podcast, StudioPress founder Brian Gardner said one of the reasons he sold the…
In this episode, John James Jacoby and I spend the first half of the show discussing WP Engine’s acquisition of StudioPress. We share reactions from social media, debate on whether it’s a good or bad thing for the WordPress ecosystem, and webhosts being at the top of the food chain. We also talk about a…
StudioPress, founded by Brian Gardner in 2007, has been acquired by managed WordPress hosting company WP Engine, for an undisclosed amount. In 2007, Gardner created the Revolution theme which took the WordPress world by storm. According to some people, it ignited the WordPress Premium theme market. In the midst of a GPL debate regarding themes…
WP Engine announced today that two-factor authentication (2FA) is now available to its 42,000 customers. The security measure will help combat increasing attempts on the host’s user portal. “As we grow, almost everything about the company changes, and security is one of them,” said WP Engine founder Jason Cohen. “For example, we see things like…
Cloud hosting provider Linode has been combatting DDoS attacks since Christmas Day, which have caused multiple disruptions and service outages across its global data centers. The attacks are ongoing and the company is struggling to keep its status blog up to notify customers. In addition to the DDoS attacks, Linode has also confirmed a data…