Matthew Widdop
Matty is a Junior SEO Executive at Intelligency, helping our clients to improve their digital performance. Matty is currently studying for his Level 3 Multi-Channel Marketer apprenticeship and has completed a Sport Journalism Degree at the University of Huddersfield.
WordPress Co Founder, Matt Mullenweg has this week announced a new Executive Director for the platform, Mary Hubbard, after the previous director’s resignation due to the ongoing turmoil currently taking place at WordPress.
Who is the new director?
Mary Hubbard has already been working at WordPress for four years, taking up the role of Chief Product Officer in 2020. The Executive Director position became available after Josepha Haden Chomphosy left Automaticc, along with a whole host of employees, due to ongoing legal issues with WordPress and their competitor WPEngine.
WordPress vs WPEngine
WordPress and WPEngine are now locked in a legal battle which has been causing the current high levels of turnover within WordPress. The issues initially arose when Automaticc CEO, Matt Mullenweg, made disparaging claims about WP Engine, including that they should be paying WordPress ‘’a significant percentage of its revenue for a licence to the WordPress trademark’’ due to the use of WP in their name.
These comments caused a whole host of issues to take place. Both companies sent cease and desist letters to their respective parties and Matt Mullenweg banned WPEngine from using WordPress features such as plug-ins and themes. This caused huge controversy as WordPress runs around 40% of the Internet’s websites and broke many sites overnight.
WPEngine has since sued Automaticc for their abuse of power and breaking their promise to run WordPress as open source. 159 WordPress employees, including Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy, left the company due to the direction of the company and were given severance packages.
