My thoughts on WordPress these days

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series WordPress alternatives

I’ve been successfully hacking WordPress more or less regularly since 2008. It’s good software, and it’s aged reasonably gracefully, feature- and bloatware- wise, compared to many enduring software brands. Its developers have been insistent on backward compatibility while they painstakingly built a community of loyal developers and users doing all sorts of amazing things with it. It’s worked, and from my perspective it has kept its eyes on the prize of the open internet: everybody can create as well as consume, and keep control of our creations while still sharing them. Good stuff. The intent of the WordPress platform has remained stable.

WordPress, the core offfering, hasn’t suffered the enshittification (Cory Doctorow’s word) of platform decay. Compare it to Microsoft Office. In the last 15 years Microsoft Office has moved online, moved to a subscription model, and scrambled to add all kinds of cloud storage, AI, and other stuff that make life harder for the guy who wants to write a proposal letter or import a .csv file into a spreadsheet. It tries to sell me stuff when I’m working.

(Some plugins, unlike core, have suffered this enshittificaton. Yoast has gone off the deep end pestering us about paying for something. WooCommerce’s product managers, I would guess, argue about how much upselling to do in their stuff.)

Recent events, the contest of wills between the administrators of WordPress and WP Engine, have shaken up my faith in the stability of the software’s intent. How is this going to unfold?

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