Many years ago I moved away from building things with WordPress. But it’s time I tried to help people understand what I think the current situation means for people still in the ecosystem.
If you haven’t heard about it yet, try entering “WordPress” and “WPEngine” into a search engine.
Some 8 or so years ago I was fairly invested in the WordPress ecosystem. I liked how empowering WordPress was as a foundation for people without a technical background to be able to create their own content-rich websites.
However when they introduced the “Gutenberg” editor, I read the writing on the wall.
An editor that empowers … who?
Gutenberg was a new editor environment that focused WordPress heavily on the end user. It allowed users to create more dynamic pages and to edit more content that would have been previously outside of their ability to change (headers and footer content, particularly).
Their decision to merge Gutenberg into WordPress Core brought WordPress much closer to their user base. That’s a decision I applaud: its great that they want to be the ones to empower non-technically minded people.
For me, I realised it would be incredibly difficult to support what the editor allowed users to do. I couldn’t standardise even a simple thing like a button, because the user could override it using Gutenberg. I couldn’t standardise templates, because Gutenberg could inject layout blocks that didn’t work on the template I had created.
It was clear from this that WordPress as an organisation didn’t care about the intermediaries: digital agencies and other technical organisations. WordPress didn’t value us. It was instead built for the far broader, non technical user base. That was all it was built for. I don’t think we were even a consideration.
At that point, I decided that I was out. I knew that my technical decisions would continue to be impacted negatively by WordPress as an organisation.
I moved on to have a successful career with JavaScript and left the ecosystem behind.
And hearing all that’s been happening, if you’re a developer or own a digital agency or other technical company, one that builds sites for end users with WordPress, I encourage you to do the same.
Digital agencies are not WordPress customers
Digital agencies and technical organisations that deliver sites built on WordPress are not who WordPress sees as it’s customers.
Therefore the WordPress organisation will continue to make decisions that could easily have a negative impact on your technical decisions for years to come. Impacts that will erode your reputation and your relationships with your users.
Instead, I encourage you to build with some other tool that is built for technical organisations, where we are it’s customer. And therefore your customers will continue to see you as those who support them.
What should I use instead?
There are plenty of good alternatives. Ones that are small and ones that support massive content rich sites. I’m not even going to mention any them by name here; they’re one deft search string away. If you know me already, then you know which ones I recommend.
If you’re invested in the WordPress ecosystem, I encourage you to build commercial themes and plugins for WordPress: Support their ecosystem and let them support their users.
If not, it’s time to move on. The heyday is over. Let users be users. And let WordPress be WordPress.