And the plugin ecosystem? A nightmare. Can't find the wood for the trees. If you have a use case that's even slightly specialised, good luck finding a plugin that does *exactly* what you want in a sea of ones that *sort of* do what you want.
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Not to mention that if, like me, you're an experienced, modern PHP developer, the code base makes you want to cry. If it wasn't already entrenched, just the fact it doesn't use Composer by default would rule it out for any serious work.
aug 31, 2025, 5:08 pm • 0 0 • view
Plus if you're going to work with it on a professional basis, you're a tiny fish in a huge sea of mediocrity. You're up against huge numbers of people who will work for peanuts. And now generative AI means those people can churn out bespoke plugins without writing a line of code that'll get worse
aug 31, 2025, 5:11 pm • 0 0 • view
And it doesn't have to be this way. Honestly, work with any other PHP CMS and you'll likely have a better time. Yes, most of them have a smaller extension ecosystem, but that doesn't matter because the core is more flexible and powerful. You can do things with the core CMS WP needs 5 plugins for
aug 31, 2025, 5:15 pm • 0 0 • view
The trouble is getting started with WP if you're not a professional web dev is easy. So often people come to you and say "We have this website someone built with WP but are having issues with it". If someone said that to me I'd probably try to encourage looking elsewhere.
aug 31, 2025, 5:17 pm • 0 0 • view
It's like with migrating from Windows to Linux. When Windows XP came out of support I moved my mum and dad who were in their early 60's from XP onto Xubuntu. They already used Chrome and LibreOffice so it's an easy move. The hard part wasn't adjusting to a new desktop, but the install process.
aug 31, 2025, 5:19 pm • 0 0 • view
Moving off WP is the same. Find a solid, reliable modern PHP CMS with a decent core, get it set up for the client and they'll likely be fine. They'll likely benefit from a cleaner, more intuitive admin that isn't full of banners nagging them to buy a paid version of a plugin they don't need.
aug 31, 2025, 5:23 pm • 0 0 • view
Plus maintaining WP on behalf of clients' probably isn't worth your time, particularly if it's vanilla WP rather than Bedrock, unless it's a favour for a friend or family. If you're a professional I suspect it's just not worth going after that business.
aug 31, 2025, 5:27 pm • 0 0 • view