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WordPress Is in Trouble

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Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#101

Post by jazzyjackson »

internetter wrote: post #79
jazzyjackson wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The principal use of Wordpress IME experience is so people can add content without learning markdown and git and so on

There are CMSes that work with static site generators. Static site generators do not imply that the input is markdown, though this is often the usecase. Any CMS that is decoupled from presentation, in fact, could be used for static site generation. Just read the structure and generate an appropriate HTML tree statically. Here are some CMSes with specific thought given to this use: https://decapcms.org/ https://getkir…

Hadn't looked into that side of things, thanks for the links

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#102

Post by [deleted] »

throwup238 wrote: post #62
mrtksn wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

right, let’s try again: Did he drink THAT psychoactive wine?

It’s more like a two stage tea made of an MAOI (the first type of antidepressant developed) and psychoactive tryptamines. Eight ball yoda says… bad trip sitter he did seek, hmm?

[deleted]

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#103

Post by CIPHERSTONE »

internetter wrote: post #74
karaterobot wrote: post #17

I've had a Wordpress blog for about 25 years. This makes me want to turn off automatic updates, since I'm worried he might just go nuclear and flip some sort of kill switch that bricks every blog, or push some ridiculous anti-Wordpress Engine banner to every installation. Of course, not keeping WP up to date is very risky as well. I'm not even insensitive to his position, even though I don't know full details. But, h…

Consider a static site. They cannot be hacked, they are cheaper to host, and once the files are generated they are immutable

This 100%. Host on github and use ghpages and Jekyll with either github supported themes or a theme of your choice.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#104

Post by electriclove »

frereubu wrote: post #40
electriclove wrote: post #31

From his perspective, after everything he has done, others are getting the financial gains and many in the community turned on him and his company. It must be a horrible feeling.

I sort of get what you're trying to do here - an exercise in empathy - but the flip side of this is that he has been made enormously wealthy off the back of thousands and thousands of unpaid volunteer hours on an open source project. It's not only "others" who are getting the financial gains.

Good point and agreed. Do you think for him it is more an issue about how much money WP Engine is making compared to him or the relative influence they have?

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#105

Post by RandomDistort »

prepend wrote: post #95
internetter wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider a static site. They cannot be hacked, they are cheaper to host, and once the files are generated they are immutable

They can certainly be hacked, just like any static site. Web servers have vulnerabilities. And the files can certainly be edited as they aren’t immutable. They are less resource intensive and easier to maintain, but aren’t immune. (Running mostly static sites converted from Wordpress sites, but also running 10 year old+ word press sites that haven’t been changed in forever)

You aren't wrong, but if you use Cloudflare Pages with a static site the only job you have to do for a static site is make sure your Cloudflare account is secure with 2fa etc. Cloudflare will handle the security of everything else.

If you have Wordpress exposed to the internet, there's a lot more security stuff to deal with.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#106

Post by DonHopkins »

Spunkie wrote: post #24

Crazy how hosting wordpress, between 2003-2024, your main concern was Chinese/Russian hackers. And in 2025 you main concern should be if Mullenweg will hijack your website for his pissing match. Also he didn't shut down the sustainability team because he "didn't know about it". He shut it down because their stated goals are a threat to Mullenwegs dictatorship hold over wordpress.

Mullenweg Before:

https://www.youtube.com/live/Qq1SBFzByDw?t=28744s

Mullenweg After:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HblPucwN-m0

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#107

Post by ValentineC »

treyd wrote: post #32

WordPress is a very mature project with a long legacy but I'm surprised that there hasn't been a larger profile attempt to make a spiritual successor to it that can shake the baggage of being PHP and the long history of vulns that have come along with it. I'm imagining some very pluggable and template driven runtime that you can ship very declarative packages for. The spicy take would be to use a Scheme for the templ…

> I'm surprised that there hasn't been a larger profile attempt to make a spiritual successor to it that can shake the baggage of being PHP and the long history of vulns that have come along with it.

I imagine that a spiritual successor would have a one-click install in many web hosts, which is all but impossible if not still written in PHP, and then installable through the various turnkey web hosting reseller stacks (e.g. Softaculous).

Then, replicating many of the popular plugins, and getting a whole community of contributors onboard who already make their living off WordPress and have little incentive to adopt something with little traction.

WordPress isn't a code framework; it's a very complete application with a massive ecosystem of plugins that serves as its moat.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#108

Post by [deleted] »

beshrkayali wrote: post #64

I really think Matt is suffering from some sort of a mental breakdown. It’s a sad situation and there’s a lot to learn about open source projects with a huge user base and where the bottle necks exist. But I think people who know or are close to him should seriously consider an intervention. I can’t believe after two decades he’d just decide to throw it all out in a blazing fire and tarnish his reputation (and Wordpr…

[deleted]

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#109

Post by simple10 »

beshrkayali wrote: post #64

I really think Matt is suffering from some sort of a mental breakdown. It’s a sad situation and there’s a lot to learn about open source projects with a huge user base and where the bottle necks exist. But I think people who know or are close to him should seriously consider an intervention. I can’t believe after two decades he’d just decide to throw it all out in a blazing fire and tarnish his reputation (and Wordpr…

I feel for him and the people in his wake. Benevolent dictators of open source are great for productivity until benevolence gives way to malevolence.

At this point, if he stepped down it would be seen as giving in. So highly unlikely until the legal dust settles a bit.

I also agree with other commenters that it's not a mental breakdown but more of a poorly executed strategy that's been in the works for awhile. To take Wordpress more into a closed source hybrid ecosystem.

And at this point, anything Matt does in favor of Automattic's business plan will blow up on social. My bet is this will continue for another 6 months at least until Automattic's revenue increases or flatlines.

But yeah, I'm curious about the mental toll when founders go through these types of hyper public events. The startup world needs a lot more discussion and guidance for mental health.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#110

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

dangrossman wrote: post #86
beshrkayali wrote: post #64

I really think Matt is suffering from some sort of a mental breakdown. It’s a sad situation and there’s a lot to learn about open source projects with a huge user base and where the bottle necks exist. But I think people who know or are close to him should seriously consider an intervention. I can’t believe after two decades he’d just decide to throw it all out in a blazing fire and tarnish his reputation (and Wordpr…

I don't think it's a mental breakdown, I think this is a (poorly executed) long pivot into Matt's companies having tighter control over the ecosystem and keeping more of the profits from hosting, plugin and theme sales. He's burning down "the community" on purpose. In a couple years, it'll be run more like Shopify, where the theme store and app store only list products that run their billing through Shopify and give…

One reason that Reddit's API changes killing the best clients was so poisonous is that the resulting non-exodus showed other companies that they can take user-hostile actions with impunity. A big enough mass of passive and undiscerning users will stay no matter what. Hence there being more freedom to take a strategy like this.
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