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Feb 25 2025

Mullenweg Rebuffs Plea To Restore Automattic’s WordPress Core Contributions via @sejournal, @martinibuster

AA WordPress developer pleaded with Matt Mullenweg at WordCamp Asia 2025, asking him to restore Automattic’s contributions to the WordPress core. Mullenweg apologized and said it’s not up to him; it’s up to WP Engine to drop their lawsuit, and he encouraged the community to put pressure on WP Engine.

Automattic’s Scaled-Back WordPress Contributions

Automattic announced in January 2025 that they were scaling back contributions to the WordPress core to those related to security and critical updates. Contributions that would otherwise had gone to core would be diverted to for-profit initiatives related to Automattic and WordPress.com.

Automattic attributed its January 2025 decision to WP Engine’s lawsuits:

“We’ve made the decision to reallocate resources due to the lawsuits from WP Engine. This legal action diverts significant time and energy that could otherwise be directed toward supporting WordPress’s growth and health. We remain hopeful that WP Engine will reconsider this legal attack, allowing us to refocus our efforts on contributions that benefit the broader WordPress ecosystem.”

WP Engine’s lawsuits, however, were a response to Matt Mullenweg’s WordCamp USA 2024 statements and also activities against WP Engine (like the WP Engine Tracker website) . A federal judge has since sided with WP Engine and granted its request for a preliminary injunction against Automattic and Mullenweg.

WordCamp Attendee Urges Mullenweg To Reinstate Core Contributions

A WordCamp Asia 2024 attendee stepped up during the Q&A portion of the conference and shared his concerns, as a business owner and a plugin developer, for the stagnation of WordPress core development.

He said:

“Hi Matt. So this is not about a question, but I am a bit concerned about like if I see that the last five years or even ten years Automattic is the biggest core contributor in the code base and everything. So it’s not actually biggest, maybe 60%, 70% of the commit… as a company, Automattic do that.

So you recently published in a blog post that you are pulling out all the contribution and everything. So as a developer, as a business owner, …my whole business depends on WordPress. We build WordPress plugins, I think if there is no Automattic in the core contribution, the whole development will be super slow.

I want to request you to reconsider that, and at least in the core development maybe you can make some changes, give more resources in the core. Because it’s complicated, …someone needs to work and I think Automattic has lots of resources, experienced people in there, so I want to request you to reconsider your position and give more developers to the core.”

Matt Mullenweg States Condition For Restoring Core Contributions

Mullenweg responded that Automattic’s spending millions of dollars to defend itself against WP Engine. He insisted that the decision to restore Automattic’s core contributions hinges on WP Engine dropping their lawsuits and encouraged the person to ask WP Engine.

Mullenweg answered:

“Yeah, thank you. Well, it’s definitely not a situation I want to be in. As we said, we’re pausing things. But very, very excited to return to having all those hundred-ish folks back doing some of the work we were doing before.

But right now we’re facing not just a maker and taker program problem… but maker-attacker. So well Automattic’s having to spend millions of dollars, per month sometimes, to defend against these attacks from WP Engine and with the court injunction, it’s just hard to be both be motivated and to just spare the resources to contribute so much.

Now, they could end it tomorrow. And I would love to welcome WP Engine back into the fold, back at WordCamp and everything. But we can’t end it, we can only defend it, you know, to all the legal attacks and they are increasing actually. And they’re coming after me personally too. As soon as they stop that, we’ll get back to it.

So please, I can’t stop it. Ask them.”

Mullenweg Asks Audience To Pressure WP Engine To Drop Lawsuit

The person asking the question said he understood Mullenweg’s position but insisted that, as an end user, he wants the software to continue to thrive. For that reason, he pleaded for Automattic to find a way to restore core contributions.

Mullenweg answered the developers second plea and asked the audience to pressure WP Engine to drop the lawsuit:

“I can’t until the lawsuit is over. So if there’s anything y’all can do to put pressure for the lawsuit to end, that would be the fastest thing to get our contributions back.”

He ended his response with a smile, saying:

“So… sorry about that.”

Concern Over Cuts To Core Contribution

The WordPress developer expressed deep concern and anxiety about the pace of WordPress core development. He emphasized that Automattic has historically provided a significant portion of core contributions and feared that without its support, WordPress development would slow significantly, impacting his business and those of others who rely on the platform.

Matt Mullenweg’s response did not directly address the WordPress developer’s plea to reconsider Automattic’s core contribution cuts. His answer framed the decision to restore core contributions as out of his control because it is dependent on WP Engine dropping its lawsuit. He stated that the lawsuit costs Automattic millions of dollars.

Mullenweg’s main points in his response to restoring Automattic’s core contributions were:

Automattic’s reduced contributions result from the financial and legal burden of defending against WP Engine’s lawsuit.
WP Engine’s legal actions make it difficult for Automattic to contribute at previous levels.
He urged the audience to pressure WP Engine to drop the lawsuit.

Watch The Question and Answer segment at the 6:21:32 minute mark:

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Feb 25 2025

WordCamp Asia: No Plans For WordPress In 5 Years via @sejournal, @martinibuster

An awkward Q&A at WordCamp Asia 2025 saw Matt Mullenweg struggle to answer where WordPress will be in five years. Apparently caught off guard, he turned to the Lead Architect of Gutenberg for ideas, but he couldn’t answer either.

Project Gutenberg

Gutenberg is a reimagining of how WordPress users can build websites without knowing any code, with a visual interface of blocks for different parts of a web page, which is supposed to make it easy. Conceived as a four phase project, it’s been in development since 2017 and is currently in phase three.

The four phases are:

Phase 1: Easier Editing
Phase 2: Customization
Phase 3: Collaborative Editing
Phase 4: Multilingual Support

There’s a perception that Project Gutenberg has not been enthusiastically received by the WordPress developer community or by regular users, even though there are currently 85.9 million installations of the Gutenberg WordPress editor.

However, one developer at WordCamp Asia told Matt Mullenweg at the end of conference Q&A session that she was experiencing hesitations from people she speaks with about using WordPress and expressed frustration about how difficult it was to use it.

She said:

“Some of those hesitations were it’s easy to get overwhelmed. You know, when you look up how to learn WordPress, and I had to be really motivated… for myself to actually study it and kind of learn the basics of blocks… So do you have any advice on how I could convince my friends to start a WordPress site or how to address these challenges myself? You know like, getting overwhelmed and feeling like there’s just so much. I’m not a coder and things like that… any advice you can offer small business owners?”

The whole purpose of the Gutenberg block editor was to make it easier for non-coders to use WordPress. So a WordPress user asking for ideas on how to convince people to use WordPress presented an unflattering view of the success of the WordPress Gutenberg Project.

Where Will WordPress Be In Five Years?

Another awkward moment was when someone else asked Matt Mullenweg where he saw WordPress being in five years. The question seemingly caught him off guard as he was unable to articulate what the plan is for the world’s most popular content management system.

Mullenweg had been talking about the importance of AI and of some integrations being tested in the commercial version at WordPress.com. So the person asking the question asked if he had any other ideas beyond AI.

The person asked:

“If you have other ideas beyond AI or even how we consume WordPress five years from now that might be different from today.”

Matt Mullenweg answered:

“Yeah, it’s hard to think about anything except AI right now. And as I said a few years ago, before ChatGPT came out, learn AI deeply. Everyone in the room should be playing with it. Try out different models. Check out Grok, check out DeepSeek, two of the coolest ones that just launched.

And for WordPress, at that point will be past all the phases of Gutenberg. I think… I don’t know…”

It was at this point that Mullenweg calls on Matías Ventura, Lead Architect of Gutenberg, to ask him if he has any ideas of where WordPress is headed in five years.

He continued:

“Matías, what do you think? What’s post-Gutenberg? We’ve been working for so long, it’s…”

Matías Ventura, Lead Architect of Gutenberg, came up to a microphone to help Mullenweg answer the question he was struggling with.

Matías answered:

“I mean, hopefully we’ll be done by then so…”

Mullenweg commented:

“Sometimes that last 10% takes, you know, 90% of the time.”

Matías quipped that it can take a hundred years then continued his answer, which essentially admitted that there were no plans without actually admitting that there were no plans for five years out.

He continued his answer:

“I don’t know, I think, well in the talk I gave I… also reflected a bit that part of the thing is just discovering as we go, like figuring out how like, right now it’s AI that’s shaping reality but who knows, in a few decades what it would be. And to me, the only conviction is that yeah, we’ll need to adapt, we’ll need to change. And that’s part of the fun of it, I think. So I’m looking forward to whatever comes.”

Mullenweg jumped in at this point with his thoughts:

“That’s a good point of the, you know, how many releases we have of WordPress right now, 60 or whatever… 70 probably…. Outside of Gutenberg, we haven’t had a roadmap that goes six months or a year, or a couple versions, because the world changes in ways you can’t predict.

But being responsive is, I think, really is how organisms survive.

You know, Darwin, said it’s not the fittest of the species that survives. It’s the one that’s most adaptable to change. I think that’s true for software as well.”

Mullenweg Challenged To Adapt To Change

His statement about being adaptable to change set up another awkward moment at the 6:55:47 minute mark where Taco Verdonschot, co-owner of Progress Planner, stood up to the microphone and asked Mullenweg if he really was committed to being adaptable.

Taco Verdonschot is formerly of Yoast SEO and currently sponsored to work on WordPress by Emilia Capital (owned by Joost de Valk and Marieke van de Rakt).

Taco asked:

“I’m Taco, co-owner of Progress Planner. I was wondering, you were talking about adaptability before and survival of the fittest. That means being open to change. What we’ve seen in the last couple of months is that people who were talking about change got banned from the project. How open are you to discussing change in the project?”

Mullenweg responded:

“Sure. I don’t want to go too far into this but I will say that talking about change will not get you banned. There’s other behaviors… but just talking about change is something that we do pretty much every day. And we’ve changed a lot over the years. We’ve changed a lot in the past year. So yeah. But I don’t want to speak to anyone personally, you know. So keep it positive.”

Biggest Challenges WordPress Will Face In Next Five Years

Watch the question and answer at the 6:19:24 mark

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Feb 24 2025

Mullenweg & Automattic Sued in Class Action Filing Over WPE Dispute via @sejournal, @martinibuster

A new lawsuit seeking class action status alleges that WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg and Automattic engaged in unfair business practices to harm managed WordPress web host WP Engine (WPE) and its customers.

According to the lawsuit:

“Plaintiff and the class seek equitable relief pursuant to Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17203 to end Defendants’ wrongful practices including requiring Defendants to cease its tortious interference with contract.”

…Plaintiff and the class also seek an order requiring Defendants to make full restitution of all monies it received through its wrongful conduct, along with all other relief permitted under Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §§ 17200 et seq.”

The lawsuit makes multiple claims against Mullenweg and Automattic:

That defendants interfered with access to WordPress resources, disrupting WPE customers.
Interfered with customers’ ability to manage their websites hosted on WP Engine (WPE).
The lawsuit claims that the actions were not legitimate trademark enforcement efforts but a pretext for degrading WP Engine’s services and pressuring customers to leave.
The complaint also accuses the defendants of monopolistic behavior, alleging that they wielded control over the WordPress ecosystem for financial gain, harming WPE customers.

According to the legal filing:

“Defendants deliberately wielded their power over the WordPress.org website like a cudgel, not only blocking access to the website but stealing resources like the ACF plugin, forcing visitors to click a checkbox asserting they are not associated with WPE, publishing WPE customer website addresses in an attempt to pressure customers to leave WPE, and repeatedly threatening future consequences including the risk of additional service disruptions for class members who did not leave WPE. “

Why the Lawsuit Seeks Class Action Status

The legal filing asserts that the lawsuit qualifies for class action certification based on allegations that Mullenweg and Automattic engaged in conduct that harmed not just the plaintiff but a broader group of WP Engine (WPE) customers. The plaintiff contends that the defendants’ actions, including interfering with WPE’s services, blocking access to essential WordPress tools, disrupting and degrading service, and pressuring customers to leave WPE, resulted in harm that, according to the lawsuit, meets the criteria for class certification under Rule 23. The lawsuit claims that WPE customers faced service disruptions, financial losses, and potential security risks.

The justification for the class action is outlined in paragraph 58 of the lawsuit:

“Plaintiff brings this action as a class action pursuant to Rules 23(a) and 23(b)(1)-(3) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, on behalf of himself, his business and a Nationwide Class defined as:

All persons in the United States who had ongoing active WPE WordPress Web Hosting Plans on or before September 24, 2024 through December 10, 2024.”

The legal filing asserts that numerous public statements and court records, including filings related to WP Engine, support the allegation that the defendants caused harm to the plaintiff and the alleged class. It then details the plaintiff’s personal experiences as further evidence of the alleged harm.

Section III, ‘Plaintiff’s Experiences,’ outlines how the defendant’s actions harmed the plaintiff, Keller, including:

Service Disruptions
Business and Financial Impact
Personal Website Impact
Security Risks
Customer Relationship Concerns
Consideration of Alternative Hosting

The legal filing details the following:

“Defendants’ interference significantly impacted the business of Plaintiff Keller. While Plaintiff Keller was happy with WPE services and intended to continue using WPE services, the service disruption and degraded service, coupled with repeated public statements and threats made by Defendants, led Plaintiff to explore moving his website and all those operated by his business to another managed web host.

Plaintiff’s livelihood revolves around building and operating websites, and significant disruptions will impact his business including his own capacity to fulfill his contractual obligations to his own clients.

Plaintiff Keller’s websites were significantly impacted by outages despite WPE’s attempts to create workarounds.

Plaintiff Keller has had to spend significant time and expense responding to the service disruptions and degradations, preparing for moving his and his clients’ websites to a new host, and in investigating a new host environment after a long and successful prior partnership with WPE. He is not alone in the harm he has suffered.

Plaintiff Keller’s personal website was also significantly impacted. Access to the WordPress backend was available intermittently, and Plaintiff Keller received emails related to this downtime.

Plaintiff Keller pays WPE $3,300 per year for its “Scale Plan,” 2 additional websites, and GeoTargeting and Multi-Site services. Due to Defendants’ actions, Plaintiff Keller was unable to update his website in a standard marketing cycle adjustment. Plaintiff Keller had to spend time and expense to manage, update, and modify his website as a result of Defendants cutting off WPE
from the WordPress ecosystem and therefore, did not receive the benefit of his bargain with WPE as Plaintiff Keller had to do the work that he pays WPE for.”

A New Phase In Dispute Between Mullenweg/Automattic And WPE

This class action lawsuit is a new phase in the dispute between Mullenweg, Automattic and WP Engine. It expands the legal battle to include claims from individual customers. With allegations of unfair competition, monopolistic behavior, and deliberate service disruptions, the class action lawsuit adds another layer to a dispute that has led some in the WordPress community to call for a change in governance to the WordPress open source project.

Read the text of the lawsuit here: (PDF)

Featured Image by Shutterstock/BCFC

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Feb 20 2025

WordPress Offers New 100-Year Domain Name Registrations via @sejournal, @martinibuster

WordPress.com updated their 100-year domain and hosting plan, unlocking the opportunity to secure a domain name for a one hundred year period for only $2,000. The new service is a breakout from the 100-year plan which is another offering that includes hosting and other benefits for $38,000.

100 Year Domain Name Registration

The new domain name registration is available for .com, .org, .net, or .blog domains and is managed in a trust account controlled by the person registering the domain. This service was previously available as part of a 100-year plan that came with hosting at a price of $38,000. The domain registration fee of $2,000 is more affordable and a good value for those who require the security of knowing the domain isn’t changing hands by mistake.

WordPress.com offers the following benefits:

No expiration surprises.
No lost domains due to admin mistakes.
No stress about renewals—ever (or 100 years, whichever comes first).
A full century of security for your domain.
One setup. 100 years of ownership.

They’ve also reimagined their 100-year plan so that it comes with numbered trust accounts controlled by the owner of the domain and hosting plus contingencies that guarantee the continued web presence should anything happen to WordPress.com or Automattic.

Read more about the new 100-year domain name registration:

Secure Your Domain For the Next Century

Featured Image by Shutterstock/gcafotografia

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Feb 19 2025

How To Manage Multiple Websites On WordPress

WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world.

Many sites worldwide use it for good reasons: It extensibility means that you can build more than just a website; its open-source nature means you own your site, and it tends to rank pretty well in search engines. Your only limit when it comes to WordPress is your imagination.

However, like a lot of other forms of websites, it does need some care to manage to make sure it’s safe and secure.

This can be a bit intimidating for a new user, but with a bit of planning, you can have a management strategy for your WordPress websites that works and is scalable for your business.

In this article I’ll share the questions I ask myself to manage WordPress in a scalable fashion.

Which Version Of WordPress Is Right For You?

The first question to ask is before your WordPress website is even built and how your project is structured.

If you are running multiple instances of WordPress where each one is relatively similar, WordPress multisite may be suitable.

This is where you run one instance of WordPress but have multiple websites running off one database, and one copy of every plugin and theme. It means scheduled tasks, such as plugin updates and backups, only need to run on one codebase.

WordPress multisite is great for larger sites that are all relatively similar – so subdomains for each department, or different languages or locales are perfect for multisite.

If you have, for example, a site and a blog subdomain, both running on WordPress, then I’d recommend looking at this approach. You can even have a WooCommerce solution in one of those subdomains.

If you’re an SEO agency running multiple WordPress sites, I recommend managing each instance separately.

The bespoke nature of client work could mean that the amount of plugins and themes installed and available for every user will be massive.

There could be client confidentiality issues. Every client could potentially see each other’s themes and plugins.

Also, there are potential security implications with one point of failure. If one site is compromised, then all the other sites in the network could be at risk.

Furthermore, not all hosts support WordPress multisite, so you really should speak to your host. It also requires a bit more technical knowledge to implement.

Should you wish to investigate multisite, then WordPress has a guide on how to install WordPress multisite network. However, for the rest of this guide, I assume you’re using the vanilla version of WordPress.

Begin With Tools You May Not Know You Have (But Don’t Rely On Them)

WordPress and your host may have some tools available to you that you can use to automate some of the management.

Speak to your host and find out if they offer backups, how often, and where they are stored (backups hosted on the same server as the WordPress sites are next to useless!).

If they do, go through the process of restoring the backup of a staging server and document that process. Some hosts also put their backups behind a paywall, so you don’t want to rely on them.

WordPress has the ability to enable auto-updates. Before enabling this, run through a test update of all plugins and themes on a staging server and review.

If themes have been edited without the creation of a child theme, then theme edits will be overwritten. Likewise, if changes were made to the plugins, then there could be errors.

If things haven’t been updated for a while, jumping from a very old version of the site to the latest may fail. Running through these changes on a staging server and testing thoroughly before deploying to live will minimize potential issues.

If both those tests are completed fine, they should be safe to auto-update. Even if there is a problem and the site triggers a fatal error, the update will usually roll back to a working version of the site.

Even with both enabled, please don’t rely on them. There are often gotchas, especially with more complex solutions, that you may need to work around.

This is learned knowledge you put into your plan of action. Furthermore, hosts can go bust or change their offering, often at short notice, so it’s a good idea to have a host-independent plan.

Prepare A Plan

Before managing multiple WordPress sites, you need to have a plan. This is what you do on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

For “daily” tasks, they should be automated – these are your uptime and security monitoring, automatic backups, and updates.

Weekly tasks are more manual tasks – any updates that were missed by the daily tasks, visual checks, and testing if functionality on the site works as intended.

Every month, some time should be dedicated to analyzing Google Search Console errors, testing the loading time of key pages, and searching for broken links. You should also dedicate some time every few months to review plugins and identify ones that have been either abandoned or removed from the WordPress repository. Doing such reviews can help fend off security issues arising in the future.

For weekly and monthly tasks, pick a number of pages to look at. These are key pages – either high conversion or traffic pages or pages that have unique functionality.

If you have an ecommerce site, place a test order too.

Finally, you should put a plan in place for what happens if something goes wrong. This is typically if the site gets hacked, or if the site goes down for a considerable length of time.

Do a dummy restore of the site, to make sure it works, and have a plan for what occurs when a minor security breach (such as a vulnerability) is discovered. A well built website with up-to-date plugins and themes, on a good host, is unlikely to be hacked, but nipping security vulnerabilities in the bud can help this. Below, I share a few tools that have security monitoring linked to services like Patchstack.

Store this plan somewhere. I have a spreadsheet I use to manage my clients, containing the client name and contact, what package they are subscribed to, the key pages, as well as any gotchas associated with the client’s sites. After setting this up, you’re ready to go.

Tools You Can Use To Manage Multiple Websites On WordPress

Thankfully, to save time, there are a number of tools to help you manage multiple WordPress sites.

These will tend to allow you to update multiple sites from one dashboard, and handle things such as security and uptime monitoring.

They are largely very similar, and unless you have a particularly bad experience, you are unlikely to move them.

Here are some of the main players:

ManageWP allows free updates and monthly backups for free. Payment services are usually “addons,” which start at $1-$2 per site for each addon such as EU and U.S. server backups, uptime monitoring (which integrates with Slack), security and performance monitoring, and link monitoring. A site with all premium add-ons would cost $9/month. If you have over 25 sites, you can bundle services, with a maximum cost of $150/month, for 100 sites. For full disclosure, I use ManageWP.
MainWP also allows free updates. It’s popular in the industry but a bit more complex, as it offers 30+ extensions that handle security and uptime monitoring, as well as integration with popular plugins like WooCommerce, Yoast, and WP Rocket, so you can analyze and update all your sites in one place. You will need to set up backups separately, and it costs $199/yr for unlimited sites or $599 for a lifetime license.
InfiniteWP has a free tier which allows you to update WordPress and plugins, and backup manually that you can download. Its premium tier, however, allows scheduled backups to the cloud, malware scanning, uptime monitoring, broken link checkers, and 15+ other features. Pricing for premium is tiered, starting at $147/year for 10 sites, up to $647/yr for unlimited sites and users.
WPRemote allows you to update plugins and themes for free. It has premium tiers with backups, staging site creation, uptime monitoring, and security and vulnerability scans. Premium tiers start at $299/year for five sites at the “Basic” level to $9,999/year for 100 sites at the “Pro” level.

A Simple Plan For Managing Multiple WordPress Websites

If you are part of in-house development, or a marketing team managing multiple similar WordPress websites, then a WordPress multisite installation may be suitable for your needs.

For the vast majority of agencies, multiple WordPress installations with separate databases and potentially hosts is the way forward. Running an entire agencies clients websites through a WordPress multisite installation would become unwieldy quickly.

For both approaches, a few simple steps can be taken to help manage multiple WordPress websites:

Prepare a task list for all WordPress sites to be split into daily, weekly and monthly tasks.
To begin, run through each task with each client, to manually identify potential gotchas, and include these in your notes.
Come up with a disaster recovery plan for worst case scenarios.
Offload as many tasks as possible, such as security and uptime monitoring and backups to a third party.

Doing this will keep your website secure, up to date, and with every performant optimisation in the latest versions of WordPress on your sites as quickly as possible.

More Resources:

Featured Image: fizkes/Shutterstock

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Feb 19 2025

How To Create a Certified Fast Website To Compete In 2025

This post was sponsored by Bluehost. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Imagine clicking on a website only to wait several seconds for it to load.

Frustrating, right?

Your prospective customers think so, too.

In a world where attention spans are shrinking, even a one-second delay can lead to lost visitors, lower rankings, and missed revenue opportunities.

Research finds that B2C websites that load in one second or less have conversion rates three times higher than those that load in five seconds or more.

Conversion rates are 2.5 times higher for B2C websites that load in one second or less.

In other words, speed is no longer a luxury.

Speed is a necessity.

A fast-loading website enhances user experience, boosts SEO rankings, and drives higher conversions.

And with search engines and consumer expectations continuing to evolve, businesses must prioritize performance to stay ahead of the competition.

Implementing the right strategies ensures that websites remain fast, competitive, and ready for the demands of 2025.

A trusted partner like Bluehost provides the robust infrastructure, advanced caching mechanisms, and built-in performance enhancements needed to help websites reach peak efficiency.

GET STARTED

1. How To Select The Right Hosting Plan

A website’s performance starts with selecting the right hosting plan. The plan should align with the site’s current and future needs to effectively accommodate growth and traffic fluctuations.

Assess Your Website’s Needs

Before settling on a hosting plan, it’s crucial to evaluate key factors like traffic expectations, content types, and scalability.

For example, websites with heavy multimedia content require more resources than text-based sites, and anticipated visitor numbers influence server capacity needs.

Additionally, selecting a plan that supports future growth ensures smooth scaling without performance bottlenecks.

Match Your Website’s Needs To What The Host Provides

Different hosting solutions cater to different website requirements, ranging from budget-friendly shared hosting to more robust, performance-driven plans. Bluehost offers multiple hosting options tailored to various business needs.

Shared Hosting can work well for smaller websites with moderate traffic, offering a cost-effective way to get started.

Bluehost’s VPS hosting offers more power and flexibility by providing dedicated resources, making it an excellent choice for growing websites that need additional performance.

For large-scale websites demanding maximum speed and control, our dedicated hosting plans deliver exclusive server access with top-tier performance for optimal speed and scalability.

2. Implement Caching Mechanisms

Caching is an essential tool for optimizing website speed by reducing the need to load the same data repeatedly. By storing frequently accessed files, caching decreases server load, enhances response times, and ensures visitors experience faster page loads.

Websites that effectively utilize caching experience better performance, lower bounce rates, and improved search rankings.

Use Built-In Caching Features

For instance, Bluehost provides multiple caching mechanisms to enhance website performance, such as PHP APC (Alternative PHP Cache). A powerful opcode caching system, PHP APC improves database query speed and optimizes PHP script execution, ensuring that frequently accessed data is retrieved faster.

On the other hand, edge caching minimizes latency by delivering content from servers closest to the user, reducing server response times and improving load speeds.

Bluehost makes it easy to use caching to enhance website speed. Caching can be enabled directly through the Bluehost control panel, ensuring seamless implementation.

Additionally, Bluehost is powered by Dell rack-mount servers, which use AMD EPYC chips, DDR5 RAM, and ultrafast NVMe storage. With caching plugins like W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket, your web pages will load faster, improving the user experience, SEO, traffic, and conversion rates.

3. Absolutely Leverage Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)

Another way to speed up websites is to examine how content is delivered to users. A Content Delivery Network (CDN) enhances website performance by distributing content across multiple servers worldwide. This reduces latency and ensures visitors load pages faster, regardless of location.

CDNs minimize the physical distance between the server and the user by caching static assets like images, stylesheets, and scripts at various data centers worldwide. This results in load times and reduced bandwidth usage.

Beyond speed improvements, CDNs also enhance website security by protecting against DDoS attacks, traffic spikes, and malicious bots. Some CDNs offer additional features, such as image optimization, automated compression, and firewall rules, that further improve performance and security.

CDNs & Bluehost

Bluehost offers built-in CDN solutions, including Cloudflare integration, to help websites achieve optimal performance and security.

Activating a CDN through Bluehost’s dashboard is straightforward, and configuring settings that best suit a website’s needs significantly improves speed and reliability.

4. Optimize Images & Media

Impact of Media Files on Load Times

Large images and unoptimized videos can significantly slow down a website. Why? High-resolution media files require more bandwidth and processing power, leading to slower page loads and a poorer user experience.

This is particularly problematic for mobile users and those with slower internet connections since heavy media files can take significantly longer to load, frustrating visitors and increasing bounce rates.

Additionally, media files that are not optimized can consume excessive server resources, potentially affecting overall website performance. If too many large files are loaded simultaneously, the hosting environment can strain, causing slowdowns for all users.

Image- and media-based slowdowns are widespread on websites that rely heavily on visual content, such as e-commerce platforms, portfolios, and media-heavy blogs.

Reducing file sizes, choosing appropriate formats, and leveraging compression techniques can greatly enhance website speed while maintaining visual quality.

How To Size Images The Right Way

First, while it may be common and easy to do, avoid using the width and height attributes in HTML to resize images since this forces the browser to scale the image, increasing load times and decreasing performance.

Instead, resize images before uploading them using graphic editing tools such as Photoshop, GIMP, or online compression services. Scaling images improperly can lead to pixelation and a stretched appearance, negatively impacting user experience.

By resizing images to their intended display size before uploading, websites can significantly reduce the amount of data a browser needs to process, resulting in faster page loads and a more visually appealing layout.

Appropriately resized images will also have a higher visual quality because they are sized for the right display dimensions.

How To Compress Images For Better Website Performance

Compressing images using tools like Squoosh, TinyPNG, or plugins like Smush helps reduce file sizes without sacrificing quality.

Implementing lazy loading ensures that off-screen images and videos only load when needed, reducing initial load times and enhancing overall site performance.

5. Minimize Plugins & External Scripts

How To Discover Your Plugins’ Usage

Overloading a website with excessive plugins and external scripts can severely impact performance. Therefore, it’s essential to regularly assess installed plugins and remove outdated, redundant, or unnecessary ones.

Limiting the number of external scripts running on a page can also help reduce loading times and improve efficiency.

How To Choose Efficient Plugins

Selecting the right plugins is crucial for maintaining website performance. First, look for lightweight, well-coded plugins that prioritize speed and efficiency.

Then, regularly auditing your plugins and removing outdated or redundant ones can prevent conflicts and minimize resource usage.

Bluehost provides hosting environments tailored for WordPress users, ensuring compatibility with essential caching, security, and SEO plugins.

By hosting your website on a reliable platform like Bluehost, you can benefit from a stable infrastructure that complements the best WordPress plugins. This will help you enhance functionality without compromising speed.

6. Tips For Compression, Minification & Technical Tweaks

Additional technical optimizations, in addition to caching and CDNs, can further improve site speed and performance. Compression and minification techniques help reduce file sizes, while other backend optimizations ensure web pages load efficiently.

Implementing these strategies can significantly improve desktop and mobile user experiences.

Benefits Of Compression

Reducing the size of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files significantly improves page speed. Compressed files require less bandwidth and load faster, creating a smoother user experience.

Effortless Compression & Technical Optimization With Bluehost

Bluehost makes compression easy. GZIP compression can be enabled via Bluehost’s control panel or by modifying the .htaccess file.

Plugins like Autoptimize help minify code by removing unnecessary characters, ensuring that files remain lightweight and optimized for performance.

Utilizing ETags & Expires Headers

Another important aspect of page speed optimization involves using ETags and expired headers, which help streamline browser requests and improve overall efficiency.

These settings instruct a visitor’s browser on how to handle cached content, preventing unnecessary reloads and reducing the number of requests made to the server.

ETags (Entity Tags) are used by browsers to determine whether cached resources have been modified since the last visit. If the content remains unchanged, the browser loads the local copy instead of downloading it again, minimizing bandwidth usage and speeding up load times.

On the other hand, expired headers specify a timeframe for when specific resources should be refreshed.

By setting an appropriate expiration date for static files like images, CSS, and JavaScript, web developers can ensure that repeat visitors are not unnecessarily reloading content that has not changed.

For example, a website logo that remains consistent across pages can be cached efficiently so that users do not have to download it every time they navigate the site.

Properly configuring these settings enhances website performance, particularly for sites with recurring visitors. It prevents redundant data transfers and reduces the workload on the browser and server.

Many hosting providers, including Bluehost, offer tools and support to help website owners implement these optimizations effectively. This ensures a faster and more seamless user experience.

7. Regularly Monitor & Execute Maintenance

Practice Continuous Performance Assessment

Technology changes and slows down. Websites are no exception.

Therefore, websites should undergo regular performance assessments to ensure they’re continually optimized for the best user experience.

Routine speed testing helps identify areas where performance can be improved, whether by addressing slow-loading elements, optimizing server response times, or refining backend processes.

Various tools can assist in performance evaluation. Google PageSpeed Insights, for example, provides detailed reports on website speed and offers specific recommendations for improvements.

Lighthouse, a Google open-source tool, analyzes performance, accessibility, and SEO, helping site owners fine-tune their pages.

Beyond automated tools, ongoing monitoring through website analytics platforms, such as Google Analytics, can offer valuable insights into user behavior.

High bounce rates and low engagement metrics may indicate slow performance, guiding further refinements.

Businesses running ecommerce platforms or large applications should consider integrating application performance monitoring (APM) tools to track performance bottlenecks in real time.

Maintenance Tips

Regular updates to website software, regardless of the platform used, are essential for security and performance.

Content management systems (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal require frequent updates to core files, themes, and plugins to prevent compatibility issues and vulnerabilities. Similarly, frameworks and libraries for custom-built sites must be kept up to date to ensure efficiency and security.

Database optimization is another crucial maintenance task. Over time, databases accumulate redundant data, slowing down query execution.

Periodic optimizations, such as removing unused tables, cleaning up post revisions, and properly indexing databases, can enhance efficiency.

Server maintenance is equally important. Websites hosted on dedicated or VPS servers should have automated backups, uptime monitoring, and log analysis configured.

Cloud-based hosting solutions like Bluehost Cloud provide performance-tracking tools that can help identify and mitigate slowdowns at the infrastructure level, a 100% uptime SLA, and more to ensure websites run smoothly.

Lastly, implementing a proactive security strategy ensures ongoing performance stability. Regular malware scans, security patches, and SSL certificate renewals help prevent vulnerabilities that could slow down or compromise a website.

Security plugins and firewalls, such as Cloudflare, add an extra layer of protection while minimizing unwanted traffic that could strain server resources.

That’s what makes Bluehost the superior choice. We offer automated backups, performance monitoring tools, and dedicated 24/7 support professionals who can help keep your website running at peak efficiency.

And with a range of hosting plans tailored to different needs, Bluehost ensures that your website will remain fast, secure, and scalable as it grows.

Building a certified fast website in 2025 requires strategic hosting, caching, content delivery, and ongoing maintenance.

Leveraging Bluehost’s robust hosting plans, integrated CDN, and performance optimization tools ensures your website remains fast, competitive, and ready for the evolving digital landscape.

Bluehost’s hosting solutions provide an easy and reliable way to optimize performance.

GET STARTED WITH BLUEHOST TODAY

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Bluehost. Used with permission.

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Feb 17 2025

WooCommerce Rebrand Offers Lessons For Gaining Competitive Edge via @sejournal, @martinibuster

An interview with WooCommerce shows that their recent rebrand is a strategic refresh, offering lessons for businesses and search marketers on how to stay relevant and competitive.

A Business Refresh

A recently announced rebrand by WooCommerce is far more than a logo update; it’s part of an evolution of their platform that demonstrates the strategic value of reassessing user expectations to stay competitive.

A spokesperson from WooCommerce agreed:

“Exactly: the brand update reflects our broader evolution toward a more integrated platform. While the visual changes are noticeable, they represent our shift toward making WooCommerce more powerful out of the box while maintaining the flexibility of open source.”

From Evolution To A Refresh

WooCommerce has been on a steady evolution from a plugin to a platform. And even though it’s referred to itself as a platform for awhile now, the evolution from plugin to platform is speeding up because of an internal WooCommerce initiative called More In Core. Announced in 2024, More In Core is a shift to a WooCommerce experience that provides a more complete ecommerce experience straight of the box, delivering the core functionalities that most ecommerce sites need without needing to install additional plugins.

One of the examples, from October 2024, is the Brand Plugin integration, which used to be a premium plugin but is now a standard feature of the platform itself. The Brand feature enables store owners to create a taxonomy based on brands.

A WooCommerce spokesperson explained:

“While ‘More in Core’ is an internal name we use (we’re excited about these improvements!), our goal isn’t simply adding more features — it’s about thoughtfully building a comprehensive commerce platform that delivers the essential tools that the majority of merchants need out of the box, reducing plugin conflict and management, increasing the depth of integration between platform features, and freeing builders and sellers to focus on other parts of their business.

We’re starting by integrating Woo-owned extensions, like Brands. This isn’t about removing opportunities for third-party developers — we remain committed to a vibrant ecosystem where developers can build and grow on our platform. We’re carefully considering which features are truly essential for most merchants and integrating them in ways that maintain the flexibility WooCommerce is known for.

Looking ahead to 2025, merchants and developers can expect continued thoughtful and deep integration of key features, continued performance improvements across product and order management in particular, and a streamlined user experience that’s leveraging more and more of WordPress’ modern admin designs.”

User Experience And UI

Focusing on the user is a great place to start a business refresh. Do site visitors use your site the same way? Are there emerging trends to consider?

I asked WooCommerce if there were any any specific UX and UI improvements implemented as part of their recent February 2025 brand refresh. They answered:

“The brand refresh aligns with ongoing work to make WooCommerce more intuitive. We’re focusing first on improving core experiences in the admin interface and store management — the essential interactions our merchants use daily.

More specifically, we’re rolling out improvements to the payments onboarding and configuration experience.

We’re creating a new commerce-optimized starter theme with a set of creative variations available out of the box. We’re iterating rapidly on the WooCommerce Analytics product we just released in beta, and collaborating directly with the community on new capabilities around order status and fulfillment management.”

Lessons For Search Marketers

I asked about how their brand refresh fits into a larger strategy in order to find out what others can learn about doing something like this for their own brands and websites. I asked them for what lessons search marketers could learn from their experience and they described a process that identified stakeholders from the ecosystem to the users, user expectations set by competitors and wrapping all of that into creating their refresh.

The WooCommerce spokesperson shared:

“Our rebrand considered the multiple groups that make up our ecosystem: builders who create stores for clients, developers who create products and extensions, merchants who run their businesses on WooCommerce, hosts who help connect us to a larger set of customers, and contributors to our open source platform. The key was researching each group to understand how they interact with WooCommerce differently: developers building businesses on our platform, merchants managing daily operations, builders creating client sites, and contributors enhancing the core platform.

And of course we also had to factor in the current landscape. What other ecommerce platforms look like, what other technology companies look like — and how can we stand out. All that, plus we needed to make sure it felt true to Woo: that it aligned with our open-source roots, what we believe in, and what the platform does. We’re incredibly proud of what our in-house design and marketing teams accomplished here; it’s a great demonstration of the team we’ve assembled and what they’re capable of.

For search marketers, there’s a valuable lesson here about understanding your different audience segments and how they interact with your product or service. Just as we needed to consider how our brand speaks to builders versus merchants versus developers, search marketers need to consider how different user groups search for and interact with their content. It’s about creating a cohesive message that resonates across audiences while addressing their specific needs and pain points.”

Priorities For A Refresh

Some people like the flexibility of only activating needed functionalities because of concerns about the performance hit that comes from feature bloat. My understanding is that there are ways to turn off unneeded functionalities, is that true? Would turning them off be as simple as a toggle (a module UI), or would they have to jump into the code to do that?

How does one go about deciding what what’s best for the user? At what point do you say, not enough people need this?

WooCommerce offered the following useful insights:

“We’re being very thoughtful about considering what features become part of core WooCommerce. We started by looking at our own premium extensions that provide essential commerce functionality — features that most merchants need to run their businesses effectively.

This isn’t about adding features just to add them, and it’s definitely not about limiting opportunities for third-party developers who are crucial to our ecosystem. We recognize that some merchants and builders need specific features that our extensions don’t offer — and that’s the power of WooCommerce. At the same time, we also recognize that having to manage multiple extensions for simple functions, like brands, can create pain points.

Instead, it’s about providing a solid foundation that both merchants and developers can build upon. Features can be easily enabled or disabled through the admin interface so merchants can keep their sites lean and fast. This modular approach means stores can use what they need while developers can continue to innovate and extend the platform in new ways, relying on robust core functionality that’s always available.

When evaluating what becomes part of core, we look at how essential the feature is for most merchants — what they need to get a store online, selling, shipping, and getting paid — plus how it fits into the broader WooCommerce ecosystem. And of course for anything we add into core, performance is top of mind for our product teams.

Our goal is to strengthen the platform’s foundation while maintaining the openness and flexibility that makes WooCommerce so powerful. In some cases we’re looking at opening up new capabilities via lower level changes, without necessarily dictating how those capabilities should be used. Order statuses are a good example here: adding separate statuses for fulfillment and payment enables all sorts of new functionality, even if we don’t immediately require all solutions to leverage both.”

Focus On Performance

Adding more features or code to a site can degrade performance, something WooCommerce considered as part of the initiative. Adding needed functions helped make the entire platform more stable which ended up helping performance.

An example that WooCommerce shared was last year’s introduction of High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS), an optimized way to store customer order information that increases store website performance over the traditional ways of handling the same data.

The spokesperson answered:

“Performance remains fundamental to our approach. When we consider adding features to core, we’re actually making a thoughtful trade-off: for functionality that most merchants need, having it built-in and optimized is often more performant than requiring an additional plugin. This can reduce complexity and potential conflicts while improving overall site performance.

Our team ensures that as we integrate features, we’re doing so in a way that maintains or improves site speed. HPOS is a prime example — we’re rebuilding fundamental structures to improve scalability. Each feature addition is carefully evaluated for its performance impact, and we’re committed to keeping WooCommerce fast and efficient. We’re also currently in the middle of a performance review across all of our main functionalities to see where we can make improvements ahead of adding anything new.

For 2025, our focus is on thoughtfully enhancing WooCommerce’s essential capabilities while maintaining the open ecosystem that lets developers build innovative solutions for merchants, and improving the quality of our user experience from end to end. The goal isn’t to add more for the sake of more — it’s about providing a solid, performant foundation that benefits merchants, builders, and developers, and raising the bar for everyone.”

Should You Consider A Business Refresh?

What WooCommerce is doing is a reminder that settling on a strategy and moving forward year after year isn’t enough; consumer needs and the ways they interact online are constantly evolving. Taking inventory of emerging trends and user expectations is a sound practice for keeping an enterprise fresh and relevant—especially important right now as the Internet undergoes one of the most significant transformations in decades. Ultimately, consumers, not competitors, should drive your strategy. Identifying better ways to interact with users, customers, and site visitors can help position you as the disruptor rather than the disrupted.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/insta_photos

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Feb 13 2025

WordPress Foundation Suffers Setback In Trademark Application via @sejournal, @martinibuster

The WordPress Foundation suffered a setback in its attempt to trademark the phrases ‘Managed WordPress’ and ‘Hosted WordPress,’ which could have allowed them to demand licensing fees for their use. An organization called Unprotected.org published documents showing it successfully petitioned the U.S. Patent Office to deny the trademarks.

The Uprotected.org website published:

“We have successfully made a petition to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) against both trademark applications for “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress”.

They then quoted the United States Patent Office decision:

“Applicant must disclaim the wording “MANAGED” because it is merely descriptive of an ingredient, quality, characteristic, function, feature, purpose, or use of applicant’s goods and services.

…This wording appears in the identification of goods and services. Thus, the wording merely describes applicant’s goods and services because applicant provides software for managing content on a website.”

Next Steps

The WordPress Foundation has three months to file a response, according to the documentation:

“Response deadline. File a response to this nonfinal Office action within three months of the “Issue date” below to avoid abandonment of the application.”

The Register quoted the owner of Unprotected.org:

“This represents a great victory for the WordPress ecosystem, and we will continue to fight until there is accountability and a change in leadership…”

They went on to promote Joost de Valk as a new leader. Joost de Valk himself has to date promoted the idea of a change in the leadership structure of the WordPress open source project, with Matt Mullenweg still playing a role.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/alpin78

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Feb 11 2025

WordPress SEO Myths Busted: What You Really Need To Know via @sejournal, @cshel

WordPress powers over 40% of websites globally – and why would it not? It is relatively easy to use and has expansive options when it comes to plugins and pre-built themes.

But even though WordPress has been in active development and use for more than 20 years, misconceptions about WordPress SEO are rampant and many site owners are confused about what truly drives rankings.

Because I can’t respond to every single misconception that pops up on X (Twitter) or Reddit, I would like to clear up some of the confusion by busting the more pervasive myths and sharing actionable insights based on my experience.

Whether you’re an old pro or running your first site, I hope you leave with clarity and confidence in your WordPress SEO strategy.

Myth #1: WordPress Is Going Away Or Shutting Down

The Reality: Despite the current public debate about governance, I *assure* you – WordPress isn’t going anywhere.

It remains a robust, community-driven platform with a massive global user base.

WordPress’ open-source nature makes it incredibly flexible and free to use, but open-source also means that discussions about its future direction happen publicly and, sometimes, loudly.

Here’s what you need to know:

WordPress Isn’t Going Away Anytime Soon: The core functionality of WordPress remains stable and widely supported. The infrastructure is backed by millions of contributors, developers, and users.
What If There’s a Fork? Forks happen in open-source projects more often than you might think. Some are a bigger deal than others. If you’ve heard this mentioned and it made you nervous because you don’t really know what it means, please be assured there is no reason for panic. A fork happens when developers create a new version by branching off from the original project. While this sounds dramatic, forks typically prioritize compatibility to retain users. Most plugins will remain compatible in the early stages, and developers often create tools to make transitions seamless.
The Bottom Line: There’s no immediate reason to leave WordPress. Any major changes will take time, and you’ll have plenty of notice. Whether the ecosystem stays unified or forks, your investment in WordPress remains secure.

Focus on what matters: a solid SEO strategy, fast performance, and user-centric content. These fundamentals will serve you well no matter what.

Myth #2: WordPress Is SEO-Friendly By Default

The Reality: WordPress gives you a strong foundation, but it’s not set-it-and-forget-it. Even out of the box, there are configurations to set.

Some SEO needs may require a plugin if your theme doesn’t offer built-in support and you’re not comfortable modifying the code yourself.

Once you’ve got all of the configurations set, and you’ve set up your plugins and configured those, there will still be on-page and content SEO that is done as you’re writing the content.

You can’t install WordPress and then stop thinking about SEO forever.

Permalinks And Metadata: I always update permalinks to create clean, descriptive URLs. Titles, meta descriptions, and alt text for images need to be provided and optimized, too.
Plugins Are Helpful, Not Magical: I use Yoast to handle metadata defaults and sitemaps efficiently, but even the best plugin is only as good as the strategy behind it. Anything can be misconfigured, so make sure you understand the settings you’re being asked to define.
Content Structure Matters: High-quality content and a logical site architecture remain crucial.
Themes Can Make or Break SEO: A poorly coded theme can undo the built-in SEO advantages WordPress provides. Many users choose WordPress for the variety of prebuilt themes, but picking one that supports your SEO efforts is critical. A bad theme can tank your rankings – and that’s not WordPress’s fault.

Myth #3: An SEO Plugin Will Guarantee High Rankings

The Reality: SEO plugins are like a compass – they point the way, but you still have to do the hiking.

Know The Basics: Plugins can’t replace good keyword research or content strategy. Are you targeting keywords just because they have high search volume, or because they’re terms your users are actually searching for? Most sites make money on conversions, not raw traffic, so attracting the right traffic is essential.
Answer User Questions: Do you know what questions your users are asking? Is your content helping them make decisions, use your product, or solve their problems? If not, your content strategy needs work – and that’s not WordPress’s fault.
Use Suggestions Wisely: Just because a plugin gives you a green light doesn’t mean your content will automatically rank. Think of the green light as a progress indicator, not a guarantee of success. I use these recommendations as helpful guidelines, but they don’t replace solid market research or a content strategy tailored to your audience. Without that foundation, you could end up with a grammatically correct, SEO-optimized article about a topic no one cares about – or one that blends into an already saturated space. That’s not the plugin’s fault; it’s a reminder that SEO tools support your efforts but can’t create demand or originality for you.

Ultimately, there’s no magic SEO bullet – not in plugins, not in content management systems, and certainly not in shortcuts.

Myth #4: Performance And Speed Don’t Matter That Much

The Reality: Core Web Vitals are an indication of performance, and page speed itself significantly affects user experience and the ability of bots and crawlers to access your site.

But this doesn’t mean hitting specific scores will guarantee a top ranking. Instead, it’s about ensuring your site provides a great experience while optimizing speed and performance.

Stay In Control With Manual Updates: Running manual updates ensures you’re not reliant on automatic processes, which can sometimes fail or get delayed. Knowing how to handle updates helps you prevent vulnerabilities from outdated plugins or themes.
Remove Unused Plugins And Themes: Unused plugins and themes can create security risks, even if they’re inactive. Regularly cleaning your site minimizes potential attack vectors and keeps your installation lightweight.
Run Performance Audits: Audits can help identify performance bottlenecks, detect plugins or scripts that slow down your site, and catch issues before they affect user experience. SEO isn’t set-it-and-forget-it; monitoring your site’s health is crucial for staying competitive.

Myth #5: Content-Length Is More Important Than Quality

The Reality: Search engines care about providing accurate, useful answers and user satisfaction, not arbitrary word counts. It’s baffling that this myth still persists today.

Does this mean that you should stop doing long-form content? No. This means that different types of answers and information naturally call for different amounts of content.

The point is to provide as much quantity (number of words) as is necessary to accomplish the mission. Extra word count for the sake of extra word count is counterproductive.

Intent First: I focus on answering user questions directly. There is zero need to add filler details and backstories just to increase the word count. Provide information if the information is necessary and useful to the reader. If your reader is looking for details on how to fix their bicycle chain, they do not need a history lesson on the invention of the bicycle.
Avoid Fluff: Write enough to cover the topic thoroughly, but avoid padding your content for length. Even if you’re not adding unnecessary details and information to your article, make sure you avoid fluffing out the sentences to increase word count, too. When I say “fluffing,” I mean taking a sentence that can be perfectly expressed in five words and expanding it to 25 words unnecessarily. For example: “The cat sat quietly” becomes “The small, furry feline creature chose to sit still in an unmoving manner on the comfortable spot by the window.”

Myth #6: Backlinks Are All You Need For SEO Success

The Reality: Backlinks help, but they’re not a magic SEO bullet, just as I mentioned earlier.

It’s like getting glowing recommendations for a restaurant that serves bad food – those referrals won’t save it from bad reviews if the dining experience is poor.

Balance Your Efforts: Link-building should be paired with strong technical SEO and high-quality content.
Don’t Neglect User Experience: Sites that are hard to navigate or slow to load will struggle, even with strong backlinks.
Content Matters: Backlinks can’t compensate for irrelevant or low-value content.
Technical SEO Is Critical: Technical SEO plays a vital role in making backlinks work for your site. If search engines can’t easily crawl and index your pages because of poor technical structure, those backlinks won’t be able to pass authority effectively or improve your rankings.

Key Takeaways For WordPress SEO In 2025

SEO has evolved dramatically over the past year, especially with the rise of AI-driven search results, pulling from authoritative sites that provide real value and context.

With Google facing competition from AI-powered engines like Bing’s integration with OpenAI, it’s more important than ever to expand your approach and adapt to the shifting landscape.

1. Ongoing Maintenance Beats Default Settings

Regular Auditing Is Essential: Even with WordPress’s built-in features, active maintenance is key. Periodically review your SEO settings, content structure, and performance to ensure your site remains optimized.
Understand Plugin Limitations: Plugins offer great guidance but are not a replacement for thoughtful strategy. Pay attention to plugin settings and adapt them to your goals rather than relying solely on default configurations.

2. Make Use Of WordPress Plugins Thoughtfully

Enhance Content Optimization: You can certainly use plugins for guidance and to manage some of the technical SEO jobs, but no plugin can do *all* the work, especially when it comes to content. Content can be optimized, but optimized content that isn’t adding value or providing useful information still isn’t going to perform well.
Simplify Tasks: AI enhancements are all the rage in WordPress plugins and themes, but don’t let the AI make decisions without your oversight and input – strategy is still a human task.

3. Don’t Rely Solely On Google

Broaden Search Strategy: Pay attention to Bing’s integration with AI-powered tools and other emerging engines.
New Search Experiences: Be ready to adapt as search engines experiment with interfaces and AI.

4. Prioritize Security And Updates

Update Regularly: Keep plugins, themes, and core files updated to avoid vulnerabilities.
Remove Unnecessary Plugins: Keep your plugin directory clean to reduce security risks.

To Sum It Up

WordPress remains a powerful tool, but success requires adaptability.

Don’t let internal debates distract you from building a fast, secure, user-friendly site. Focus on proven strategies, stay flexible, and be ready for emerging SEO trends.

Whether it’s Google, Bing, or the next big thing, you’ll be ready. Audit your site’s speed, usability, and content strategy today.

Use plugins and tools to simplify optimization – but never forget the human touch in your SEO strategy.

More Resources:

Featured Image: JuIsIst/Shutterstock

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Feb 9 2025

WordPress Leader Mullenweg Silences Joost De Valk via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of WordPress, posted a statement on X (formerly Twitter) announcing that Joost de Valk was no longer speaking at WordCamp Asia and was persona non grata for having “stabbed” him when he was vulnerable and betraying his confidence. Mullenweg cited statements by de Valk to prove his point, but those statements were presented without their full context, which significantly altered their meaning.

Joost de Valk Removed From WordCamp Asia

Joost de Valk, creator of the Yoast SEO plugin was scheduled to speak at WordCamp Asia on February 21st but was removed from the schedule. He had been scheduled to speak on the topic of marketing WordPress products. A post on X by Matt Mullenweg explaining why he was removed suggests that de Valk was removed on orders by Mullenweg.

Screenshot Of Joost De Valk’s WordCamp Asia Speaker Agenda

Mullenweg: Joost “Stabbed Me When I Was Down”

Matt Mullenweg posted an explanation of why Joost was removed from the WordCamp Asia schedule, with his motivation being to get ahead of any “drama” stirred up by de Valk, although at the time of writing Joost has been silent about the removal on both X and his blog.

Mullenweg posted:

“Before he tries to make more drama about not being at WordCamp Asia, I just wanted to say that I feel @jdevalk stabbed me when I was down, betrayed confidence, tried to take advantage of a situation for personal clout and influence.

I have given him hundreds of hours of my time and more access than almost anyone in the WP community, including admin access on Google Analytics, a marketing leadership position, and more. This trust was betrayed.

His previous contributions do not “make up” for this behavior, nor has he apologized or taken any conciliatory action. This deeply saddens me.

Because of this, I will not interact with him any further or participate with anything he’s involved with, he’s persona non grata.”

The term persona non grata means that a person is unwelcome. It’s use originated in diplomatic contexts but is now used for any situation where a person is no longer welcome.

Out Of Context Citations

Mullenweg followed up with another post with citations of statements published by Joost de Valk that Mullenweg characterize de Valk is trying to “stage a coup” of WordPress.

He continued:

“He’s trying to claim he didn’t want to fork or stage a coup, but wrote:

‘I think it’s time to let go of the cult and change project leadership.’

‘But it’s clear now, that we can no longer have him be our sole leader’

‘I’m already talking to several hosts about this, and would welcome anyone who wants to join these conversations, so we’re not duplicating work.’

‘I’m here, and willing to lead through this transition. I do have the time, the energy and the money needed to fund myself doing it.’

X is a micro-blogging format that limited how much context Mullenweg could post. It’s helpful to see those statements in context in order to fully understand them.

For example, the quote in which Joost references the “cult” nature of WordPress leadership takes on a different meaning when viewed in its full context.

Here’s the out of context version:

“I think it’s time to let go of the cult and change project leadership.”

The full version of the passage makes it clear that de Valk is merely suggesting the creation of a board (later on detailing that it’s a board with Matt involved in a leadership position).

The full statement:

“I’ve spoken to many slightly outside of our industry over the past months about what was happening and several people, independent of each other, described WordPress as ‘a cult’ to me. And I understand why.

I think it’s time to let go of the cult and change project leadership. I’ve said it before: we need a ‘board’. “

Joost later explains that he isn’t advocating for removal of Matt from leadership but rather giving a voice to all stakeholders, including Matt’s.

He wrote:

“I’m still, to this day, very thankful for what Matt has created. I would love to work with him to fix all this. But it’s clear now, that we can no longer have him be our sole leader, although I’d love it if we could get him to be among the leaders.”

The reality is that Joost was never arguing for a change in leadership. From September to December Joost had largely limited his opinion to suggesting that there should be more transparency about how much of the trademark licensing fee goes to support the WordPress project. Rather than stabbing Mullenweg when he was down and calling for a coup, Joost was more cautious and circumspect in his public remarks.

It was only in December that he published his “Breaking the Status Quo” blog post where he openly advocated that Mullenweg consider a change in governance that reflected the voices of more than one stakeholder, with Mullenweg still in a position of control. Joost was not leading the call for change, others had already been doing that for months. Joost was lending his (considerable) voice to a movement that was already asking for change in how the WordPress project is governed.

Response To Mullenweg’s Post

Responses to his post were muted because the ability to respond was limited to those he mentions or is following. @arniepalmer responded by explaining that events look far differently from his perspective, pointing out that de Valk was not trying to seize leadership of WordPress away from Mullenweg but discussing a way to expand leadership beyond just one person.

He wrote:

“Matt, I can see how you could be offended by someone who has an opinion on how things in WordPress leadership could be improved and mention that project leadership needs a change. Especially when you have led the project for so many years. However, in my opinion, @jdevalk was engaging in a discussion for a wider solution, not a fork, not a takeover, just a start over with you still being A leader – which is again, in my opinion, essential.

I am saddened that Joost has been excluded from @wcasia2025 as it could have been an opportunity for you and him to discuss options in person. An opportunity to build bridges and even if no solution is reached, the effort has been seen to be made to not exclude those that have differing opinions on how this community driven project moves forward. Criticism of leadership is never a pleasant situation for anyone. I believe a walk back on this is possible and as tickets (including airline and hotels) are already booked for all concerned, booking a meeting room is the smallest of concerns here.”

Joost de Valk Is Ousted And Silenced?

Some time ago, I asked someone how a civil war in his country started. His nutshell explanation was that for decades, citizens, students, and unions had demanded change, but one by one, the government sealed off every avenue for dialogue. Rather than gaining control, it built pressure to the breaking point, leaving no other outlet for change, which eventually came.

Joost de Valk has not made a statement (or drama) about his ouster from WordCamp or his new “persona non grata” status with Mullenweg. It’s unclear what attempting to silence de Valk has accomplished.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Ollyy

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