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Hey fellow WordPress devs,
Our web development agency has a pretty big portfolio that heavily relies on Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), particularly the Pro version. The whole situation has me worried about the future stability of ACF and how this conflict might affect the ecosystem and our business.
How are you all navigating this situation? Should I be considering moving away from WP Engine’s products altogether?
Would love to hear any advice or insights on how to handle this mess. Thanks in advance. 🙏
ACF Free (direct from the ACF website) & ACF Pro both receive their updates direct from the ACF servers.
ACF Pro has always done this (same for all pro plugins).
ACF Free has done this since 6.3.8 (which needs to be installed using the [latest release](https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/blog/installing-and-upgrading-to-the-latest-version-of-acf/) on ACF’s website, not the WP plugin repo, which has been stolen by Matt/WP).
There’s no reason to stop using plugins owned by WP Engine.
>Should I be considering moving away from WP Engine’s products altogether?
I’ve taken the opposite view, that they may be the only ones big and competent enough to protect against arbitrary actions by Matt.
However, I expect his next move will be to use a WordPress Core update to try to disallow WPengine or WPEngine plugins. That would prompt a fork.
The question is what actions Matt would take against other plugins after having taken this step. Not obvious any plugin is safe.
I’d suggest just staying with WP Engine and ACF until you need to switch, if you ever do. Otherwise you’re creating work for yourself and letting Matt’s behavior work.
If you’re using the pro version it basically changes nothing for you, it’s out of reach for Mullenweg. WP Engine should keep updating the plugin normally.
My sites are hosted on WPE and we make extensive use of ACF Pro. I’m sticking with WPE.
This might be illogical and paranoid, but I am considering spinning up a dev site NOT on WPE and load all the plugins I use on my various WPE sites. I’ll use this as my “miner’s canary” to monitor for plugin updates that Matt may block from displaying on my WPE sites. (I never use auto-updating, preferring to manually update all my plugins, so checking for updates is not a big deal for me)
I’m navigating it by making sure all the ACF on our client sites are updated from WPE since that is what they’re expecting, not some hijacked fork with motives not in their best interest
> Should I be considering moving away from WP Engine’s products altogether?
WPE customers are the only ones *not* affected by Matt’s antics. They’re getting updated and non-hijacked plugins, unlike almost everyone else.
ACF Pro is not affected. Nothing has changed. It is not in the repo.
I’m in the same boat, we have roughly 75 clients on WP engine and i’ve crossing my fingers and watching closely. Thanks for asking this question.