In October 2024, a dispute between WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, Automattic, and WP Engine raised questions about the services law firm websites depend on. WP Engine is a hosting company that also owns Advanced Custom Fields, a WordPress plugin.
WordPress remains open-source software supported by a community of contributors. The 2024 dispute involved contributions to the project, trademark use, and access to WordPress.org services.
One important correction: the documented fork was of the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, not WordPress itself. On October 12, 2024, WordPress.org announced Secure Custom Fields, a fork of ACF. The ACF team continued distributing its plugin through its own website.
That does not mean your law firm needs to abandon WordPress. Ask the person maintaining your site to confirm where plugin updates come from, that backups can be restored, and who handles support when something breaks.
The practical issue was how affected plugins received updates. The ACF team published instructions for its update service. Your developer should check the plugins your site actually uses rather than assume every WordPress site faces the same problem.
What Does the Future Look Like?
Despite the dispute, I still consider WordPress an excellent CMS for law firms.
It’s user-friendly, flexible, and has a massive ecosystem of plugins and developers. We’ve loved working with WordPress for these reasons.
That said, technology is moving fast. AI and low-code/no-code platforms are making software development easier and more powerful. With the drama surrounding WordPress and WP Engine, it wouldn’t surprise me if a new competitor enters the market.
The dispute made me think harder about dependence on platform providers. I’ll continue to evaluate alternatives, including Webflow, against what each firm needs.
Thoughts on Closed Systems
This situation also raises the debate over closed systems. For example, Scorpion, a company many law firms are familiar with, offers a proprietary CMS.
A proprietary CMS can make changing providers more work. Scorpion’s current FAQ says customers who fulfill their contract can receive static files, design assets, and content, but need another vendor to rebuild the site on a different CMS. Owning those assets and having a working website you can host elsewhere are separate things. For firms making that move, our guide to moving a Scorpion website to WordPress explains the rebuild, account access, and launch checks.
But now, with the WordPress drama, we’re seeing the flip side.
The WordPress Foundation owns the WordPress trademark; the software is available under the GPL license. For your firm, the practical question is whether you control the accounts, files, database, and backups needed to move your site. WordPress makes a move possible, but your developer still needs to plan it.
Last updated:
