Dear WordPress: No, I Do Not Like Pineapple on My Pizza

WordPress is far and away the world’s most popular content management system, powering approximately 40% of the world’s websites. But that remarkable achievement hasn’t been good enough for WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, who launched a campaign against WP Engine — a popular WordPress hosting company and developer — this past September.

Calling them a “cancer” to the WordPress community, Mullenweg took several actions against WP Engine, including hijacking one of their most popular plugins and forcing users to indicate that they’re not affiliated with WP Engine before accessing WordPress resources. WP Engine subsequently filed a lawsuit, claiming that Mullenweg and his company Automattic were abusing their power and endangering the broader WordPress community. (TechCrunch has an extensive breakdown of the WordPress/WP Engine drama.)

So far, the court has sided with WP Engine. Last week, they won an injunction against Mullenweg and Automattic that, among other things, ordered Mullenweg to remove the “loyalty” checkbox from the WordPress.org login screen. Mullenweg has since complied, sort of.

Instead of being asked to confirm that you’re not “affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise,” you’re now asked to confirm that “pineapple is delicious on pizza.” If you’re like me, however, and refuse to agree that pineapple belongs on pizza, then you can’t log in. Meaning you can’t access various resources, like asking for help in the official WordPress forums, or participate in discussions.

Obviously, checking a box about your pizza topping preferences is — I hope — less binding than indicating an affiliation with Mullenweg’s corporate opponent. Regardless, it’s incredibly childish. (To be fair, there’s no indication that Mullenweg, himself, made this change. But neither has he fixed it.) Rather than take the “L” like a mature adult, Mullenweg has opted for petulance and tantrums. Which handily describes his behavior ever since his first accusations against WP Engine. Nick Heer is right when he calls Mullenweg et al. “clowns.” Petty behavior like this is just thumbing one’s nose at the WordPress community.

I’ve used WordPress in the past, but it’s a frustrating developer experience. (WordPress is a blogging tool at its core, which is fine until you build a non-blog site with it. At which point, you usually have to install plugins and/or hack your functions.php file to force WordPress to do what you want.) Why, then, should I continue using a platform that I already find problematic when its founder is also intent on insulting my intelligence and acting like a child? Especially when there are so many other great CMS solutions out there, including Craft, ExpressionEngine, Ghost, and Statamic.

And that doesn’t even take into account his dubious views on pizza toppings.