WordPress has gone off the rails.
A big part of my business for the last 10+ years has been building sites using, and developing plugins for, WordPress. I’ve tried and used other CMS’s from time to time, but when I’m in a hurry to develop a site quickly (which is practically always) I turn to WordPress. It’s what is most comfortable, familiar, and (mostly) just works.
Nevertheless, I have a love-hate relationship with WordPress. The Blocks-based editing system is shit. I never wanted it, never asked for it, and yet it was forced on me. I can go through extra steps to disable Blocks and get back to a sort-of normal WordPress experience, but it requires installing at least 2 separate plugins, Classic Editor and Classic Widgets. (The fact that Classic Editor has over 9 million active installations tells you I’m not alone here!)
I recently stumbled across this interesting graph from W3Techs showing WordPress’ market share over the past 10 or so years compared to other platforms. WP was growing massively in popularity until 2022 — what happened?
My theory: Blocks killed WordPress.
Allow me to elaborate. Up until version 5.0, WordPress was a great product. It was aimed at a particular audience that tended to be (sorry there’s no nice way to say this) smarter, more tech-savvy: web developers/agencies like me, independent people with decent technical ability even if they were not programmers, and writers/thinkers/creatives who generally had the brain power to figure out basic issues on their own. If a technically-challenged person wanted to “build” a website, he either had to turn to a professional to do it for him, or try one of the mass-marketed idiot-proof drag-and-drop “builders” — the Wix-es and Squarespaces of the world.
All was well and good until the team in charge of WordPress made a ghastly decision — they decided to turn their backs on everything that made WordPress what it was, and instead try to become the competition. They decided to dumb-down WordPress and go after the mass market.
Back in 2018 WordPress was powering roughly 30% of all websites. Wix and Squarespace combined were about 1%. And yet WordPress decided it would be a great idea to start working on a drag-and-drop editor and become more like their 1% competitors. From the release of v5.0 in 2018, to the release of v6.0 in 2022, practically all WordPress development was about one thing: Blocks. The old school WP people like myself either learned to love Blocks, or became second class citizens.
Why did WordPress decide to do this? Were they worried about Wix and Squarespace eating into WP’s market share? And if so, why was it a good idea to take a thing that millions of people did like and transform it into something else? Why not let WordPress be what WordPress is, and who cares about the market share? If it was about making more money (which I’m convinced it was) then why not fork WordPress and launch your drag-and-drop Blocks competitor to Wix/Squarespace as a new thing and capture BOTH markets?
It’s worth giving a shout-out to a group who has at least tried to preserve what WordPress was to us, in some form — ClassicPress. CP started as fork from WordPress v4.9 — the last good version, one might say. I want so much to love ClassicPress, I really do. But unfortunately it just doesn’t work as promised. Maybe I’m wrong, but I understood the point of ClassicPress was to be a drop-in replacement for WordPress. Maybe in the beginning it was. But as development has proceeded on the ClassicPress project, it has become less and less usable to me.
Again, I’m a busy guy. I don’t have time to learn the intricate details of new platforms. If I have a site to build, I have to be able to get it done quickly and move on to the next project. I have tried — multiple times — doing this in ClassicPress. CP is easy enough to install — just like WordPress. But then I try to start building by installing themes and plugins — you know, doing the normal shit to build a website — and it just doesn’t work.
I’ve tried troubleshooting a bit and I know it comes down to issues with scripts 99% of the time. Apparently they want to make ClassicPress “lightweight” so a lot of the scripts you expect to be there (because they would be there in WordPress) aren’t there. Sometimes you can manually load them and be on your merry way. I minor inconvenience, but not insurmountable. However there are other cases where the scripts you want not only aren’t there, they’ve been replaced with something else and you can’t use CP the way you want. They even list this as a “feature” on their website:
Obsolete JavaScript Libraries Removed
No more jQueryUI, Thickbox, ClipboardJS, or HoverIntent!
Replaced with native HTML5 or modern libraries like SortableJS.
What if I want jQueryUI or Thickbox? They work! Who says they’re “obsolete”? And who cares? Just let me use what I want to use!
Again, some of these issues are fixable, but now you’re getting down into the weeds. I have one plugin I’ve been trying to make compatible with ClassicPress and I just can’t because the scripts I need (which are in WordPress and work just fine there) aren’t compatible with ClassicPress. I don’t have time for that. At this point I give up and go back to WordPress, where I quickly get my project done and move on to the next one.
All I want is the old WordPress that I know and love. WordPress without Blocks, without the bullshit. Something that IS compatible with the vast WP-ecosystem of themes and plugins, even if it was only the versions of themes/plugins that were in circulation at the time of WP 4.9. Put whatever name you want on that, and that’s the product I want.
ClassicPress, sadly, isn’t it. I want so much to love them and support them, but they seem determined to become their own thing and I just don’t have the time to figure out how to adapt to their wishes.
So here we are. I still use WordPress for many projects, although lately I’ve taken to installing older versions (mostly WP 4.9.x) and making do with equally old versions of themes/plugins equivalent to that era. It depends on the client of course and I’m not always able to do this, but for the projects where I know it will be okay, it is such a breath of fresh air.
Meanwhile, I confess I’m amused watching the decline of WordPress’ market share. Even though I would never use Wix or Squarespace or anything like them, I enjoy watching them rise as WP falls. Call it poetic justice for WP stabbing me (and people like me) in the back.
And I dream of the day somebody comes out with a true drop-in replacement for the WordPress that once was.