My friend, Pooj, over at Life’s Fine Whine, brought up some issues with WordPress in a recent post. There are many challenges with WordPress, but there are some seriously powerful elements, too. As Pooj points out, the community is perhaps the most powerful element, but it’s not the only one.
Now, I’ve been using WordPress for ages, but it’s not the only platform I’ve used. I started blogging on Blogger. When Google acquired them, I believed Blogger would be indomitable. Well, I was wrong. Blogger blogs look pretty much the same as back in the early 2000s. I don’t know what Google has done with the platform as far as development, but I expect it’s mainly security. Navigation, themes, all of it looks pretty much unchanged. It pretty much looks like Google has forgotten about it. Which I guess is preferable to some of the possible outcomes. I mean, there’s a whole website dedicated to their abandoned products. When Google took over this tool, I had no idea that abandoned products would be a key part of their legacy. Clearly, my belief that Google taking over something would be a great thing was a miscalculation.
Now, I have a degree in web development. I could just build my own site, and have built many. However, there is no community around it. Adding a RSS feed or email subscription feature requires even more code, along with configuring some other pieces. Thus, there’s no easy community building tool.
I’ve also studied Joomla, another CMS tool. It’s less well used as a platform, which I don’t care too much about. But, again, it’s lacking on the community side, too.
We have things like Wix and SquareSpace, which I’ve used extensively. I actually like these tools alot, but they’re a bit different. The ease of managing your connections is nice. You can build all kinds of email communications. But they’re proprietary. Each one a private company. They’re quite easy to design, though. They’re meant to be no-code. I do like that I can utilize some HTML with relative ease if I need some customization.
One of the things I like a lot about WordPress is that it’s Open Source. The surrounding community is something I value. It makes me feel a greater sense of ownership.
I do recognize that WordPress’s User Interface has undergone some radical transformations. I’m not much of a fan of most of it. The Block Editor, in particular, is something I loathe, but can cope with. (Don’t get me started on Elementator.) I do need to be honest, though, there have been many times that I’ve thought it would be easier for me to just code my own websites.
Ultimately, WordPress is powering over 43% of websites, which is a powerful thing. It shows the effectiveness and resilience of the platform. There’s a lot I would love to see done differently. But, at this point, I still appreciate it for what it offers.
Your comments make me feel more at ease with the future of WP.
BTW…
I was under the impression AI is replacing lots of coding jobs, including web design (eg many Australian coders have just been sacked) but maybe it is a specialised functionality beyond the financial reach of individuals.
There’s been a lot said about AI replacing developers, but I’m also reading that a lot of it is a smokescreen. Like the recent layoffs at Block were stated to be because of AI driven efficiencies, but when you look deeper, it’s more about the over-hiring during the pandemic (here’s Om Malik’s take on it): https://om.co/2026/02/28/block-tackle-job-cuts-the-ai-narrative/
We’ll see, I guess.
Interesting!
Thanks so much for linking to my post and for sharing your thoughts about WordPress too. I totally agree, compared to other blogging platforms there’s quite a few things WordPress does right. I don’t like the Block Editor either, I think it’s unnecessarily difficult to use but it’s worth powering through. Personally, I feel most of the issues I have are due to the integration with Jetpack. Things (at least for me) were fine before that. Now, my stats are very glitchy which is pretty annoying.