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Breaking up with WordPress after two decades

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Re: Breaking up with WordPress after two decades

#11

Post by chuckadams »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #6
chuckadams wrote: post #3

The Achilles heel of WordPress is its backward and brittle storage format: every post is stored in the database, in "html kinda" format, plus random shortcodes initially, and now blocks encoded as JSON inside HTML comments. Plugins then add their own random formats on top of that, and store their metadata in another table, usually in serialized PHP object form. It's a wobbly Jenga tower of technical debt, and WP's un…

The design issues are also in other parts of the system. Major silliness of WP is, that basically every tutorial and documentation encourages a pattern of concattenation, instead of composition. This is in PHP tradition, which just runs scripts from top to bottom, which means you can change code while it is running and next request it will run your changed code, if it passes by that part of the code to handle the req…

A lot of WP's architecture could be fixed internally, with shims added for backward compatibility. I took a stab at doing just that in a fork, but what I really don't know how to fix without major BC breakage is WP's reliance on global state. And these days there seems little point in incremental fixes, owing to the AI elephant in the room that doesn't need further mention. I suppose if WP were my livelihood, I might think otherwise, but even though I have several good friends in the WP community, I've pretty much written off the platform as a lost cause.

Re: Breaking up with WordPress after two decades

#13

Post by skprasad »

I had been using WordPress since, what I remember, back in 2004 or 05. I think that was the first time I used WordPress and I stopped using it last year when Vibe Coding helped me build something with NextJS and Sanity and other CMSs as well. I've actually quite enjoyed the Vibe Coding part but I do miss WordPress from time to time.

Re: Breaking up with WordPress after two decades

#14

Post by dpark »

luckylion wrote: post #9
Twirrim wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately that industry has been in a race to the bottom for a very long time. Most customers just care about the dollar amount they're paying. In a race to the bottom there is no corner that can't be cut. I've met so many people over the years who've worked in the industry at some stage (including myself), and not one of us has had a positive experience. All that to say, it's almost certainly true that unless yo…

Where is that race to the bottom visible? Surely not in the pricing -- bluehost's intro offers are already expensive (10gb space shared hosting for $3.99 a month -- in 2026?). After a year, it jumps to $11.99 with 12 months terms. That's more than $1 per gb storage. In 2026. There is no race to the bottom.

Could you do it cheaper?

The $10/month gets you storage, but also bandwidth and hosting and a bunch of tooling. Worth it? Probably so if you want something that mostly just works.

Re: Breaking up with WordPress after two decades

#15

Post by blurredabstract »

addedlovely wrote: post #2

Might want to check out Kirby cms - sounds like you’ve vibe coded your way to something similar but Kirby will have more niceities.

+1 on Kirby. It brought back fun in working on projects with CMS as a requirement. The cost for a license is easily justified when I calculate working hours and nuisances that would come with Wordpress.

For now I didn't find the comparably tiny plugin ecosystem to be a problem. It's well documented and lets me write missing functionality quickly.

My first encounter with it was because a wordpress project annoyed me so much I started to look around for alternatives. I took the project as a real-world example to take a look at Kirby and rebuild the site in an afternoon.

Re: Breaking up with WordPress after two decades

#16

Post by benatkin »

blurredabstract wrote: post #15
addedlovely wrote: post #2

Might want to check out Kirby cms - sounds like you’ve vibe coded your way to something similar but Kirby will have more niceities.

+1 on Kirby. It brought back fun in working on projects with CMS as a requirement. The cost for a license is easily justified when I calculate working hours and nuisances that would come with Wordpress. For now I didn't find the comparably tiny plugin ecosystem to be a problem. It's well documented and lets me write missing functionality quickly. My first encounter with it was because a wordpress project annoyed me s…

    Indemnification  
     
    By accepting the Agreement, you agree to indemnify and otherwise hold harmless Us as well as Our officers, employees, agents, subsidiaries, affiliates and other partners from any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or exemplary damages arising out of, relating to, or resulting from your use of Kirby or any other matter relating to Kirby. This paragraph also applies to you if you are not the licensee (e.g. if you use Kirby while someone else is the licensee).
Doesn't sound too nice

Re: Breaking up with WordPress after two decades

#17

Post by chuckadams »

benatkin wrote: post #16
blurredabstract wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 on Kirby. It brought back fun in working on projects with CMS as a requirement. The cost for a license is easily justified when I calculate working hours and nuisances that would come with Wordpress. For now I didn't find the comparably tiny plugin ecosystem to be a problem. It's well documented and lets me write missing functionality quickly. My first encounter with it was because a wordpress project annoyed me s…

Indemnification By accepting the Agreement, you agree to indemnify and otherwise hold harmless Us as well as Our officers, employees, agents, subsidiaries, affiliates and other partners from any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or exemplary damages arising out of, relating to, or resulting from your use of Kirby or any other matter relating to Kirby. This paragraph also applies to you if you are n…

The MIT license comes with pretty much the same sort of thing at the end, and in all-caps at that.

Re: Breaking up with WordPress after two decades

#18

Post by luckylion »

dpark wrote: post #14
luckylion wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is that race to the bottom visible? Surely not in the pricing -- bluehost's intro offers are already expensive (10gb space shared hosting for $3.99 a month -- in 2026?). After a year, it jumps to $11.99 with 12 months terms. That's more than $1 per gb storage. In 2026. There is no race to the bottom.

Could you do it cheaper? The $10/month gets you storage, but also bandwidth and hosting and a bunch of tooling. Worth it? Probably so if you want something that mostly just works.

Me, individually, providing it to one customer? no.

At scale, providing it to tens of thousands? yes.

It's a perfectly fine price for a customer to pay and not worry about it, but it's not squeezed to extract every fraction of a cent because competition is so fierce. In a race to the bottom you'd expect the bottom to be approached, but it isn't.

Bluehost, Kinsta, WPEngine, GoDaddy etc, are marketing companies that sell webhosting, and they have very healthy margins. They compete on ads, not on price.

Re: Breaking up with WordPress after two decades

#20

Post by Tomte »

chuckadams wrote: post #17
benatkin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indemnification By accepting the Agreement, you agree to indemnify and otherwise hold harmless Us as well as Our officers, employees, agents, subsidiaries, affiliates and other partners from any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or exemplary damages arising out of, relating to, or resulting from your use of Kirby or any other matter relating to Kirby. This paragraph also applies to you if you are n…

The MIT license comes with pretty much the same sort of thing at the end, and in all-caps at that.

Disclaiming warranty and indemnification are different things.
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