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WordPress’ market share is shrinking

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181–190 of 229 posts

Re: WordPress’ market share is shrinking

#181
post #12

We can make assumptions all day but for me, the worst thing about WordPress is EASILY Plugin Hell. I can update all plugins this morning and they all want updates by the end of the day. And then when they break it’s a disaster. WordPress itself needs to take a chill pill too. Leave a version out for a year or more, and only small security patches. In the last year, I think we’ve seen block widgets, JQuery migrate nig…

I host a hobby website and use WordPress for everything. Even as an entry level user, I agree the amount of plugins are ridiculous. But it's free and I only pay for hosting. Anyone knows what are the alternatives for someone like me?

Last time I looked, Hugo + GitHub + Netlify is free and fast, within fairly generous limits.

Hugo is great… once you work out how it works.

Re: WordPress’ market share is shrinking

#182
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I host a hobby website and use WordPress for everything. Even as an entry level user, I agree the amount of plugins are ridiculous. But it's free and I only pay for hosting. Anyone knows what are the alternatives for someone like me?

I've been looking at replacing my project's website with Hugo ( https://gohugo.io ). Rather than generating a web page dynamically every time someone comes to your site, you generate the entire website statically whenever you change something. That means hosting can be entirely a "dumb" web server (or a "dumb" web server + apis which feed info to javascript, if you really need it). It also means: * you can keep every…

And the dumb web server can be Firebase Hosting, Netlify, Vercel, CloudFlare Pages, with extremely generous free tiers and practically zero maintenance.

Re: WordPress’ market share is shrinking

#183
post #178

Most users of WordPress would be better served by a static site generator system. Unfortunately, it seems most of these are very much "by developers, for developers" in flavor. They're overly complicated and insufficiently developed in the front-end to be useful to most of WordPress' current target market (e.g., businesses with a need to present mostly static content, but with the ability to make changes and deploy/p…

WordPress can be used as a static site generator via the Simply Statuc plugin. It needs some thought into the design ( which plugins won't work because it isn't dynamic anymore), but it's a decent way of having the UX for non-developers/other very technical folk while having the security, stability, deployability and maintainability of static hosting.

Re: WordPress’ market share is shrinking

#185
post #178

Most users of WordPress would be better served by a static site generator system. Unfortunately, it seems most of these are very much "by developers, for developers" in flavor. They're overly complicated and insufficiently developed in the front-end to be useful to most of WordPress' current target market (e.g., businesses with a need to present mostly static content, but with the ability to make changes and deploy/p…

What's old is new again? Before WordPress started to eat everything, Blogger, Movable Type, and other popular publishing platforms were all static site generators. Dynamic platforms were too complicated and resource intensive for the masses.

Re: WordPress’ market share is shrinking

#186
post #153
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've just had a bathroom fitted by a guy who functions purely on Instagram for his portfolio and Whatsapp for communication. As I'm old and curmudgeonly I wanted an email address, and when I got it, it's the one that came free with his phone. And work in anything international and this is essentially it. Want to find a smoothie shop in a beach town in Mexico? Instagram/FB + WhatsApp...thats it.

I use Google Maps for this and it still works very well...?

I find Google Maps is often out of date. Many a time I've headed into a small village to visit cafe Google Maps recommended only to find out it's been closed for 9 month.

Re: WordPress’ market share is shrinking

#187
post #101
post #23

I think the "private website" space is shrinking - despite what adverts for Wix and Squarespace might infer. The consumer/blog space of geocities, tripod and the like went to social media. Then we went through a period of "businesses putting up 10 pages for a fixed price" through first of all "a local web guy" then by themselves using Wix/WP/SS etc. I've just had a bathroom fitted by a guy who functions purely on Ins…

> I've just had a bathroom fitted by a guy who functions purely on Instagram for his portfolio and Whatsapp for communication. As I'm old and curmudgeonly I wanted an email address, and when I got it, it's the one that came free with his phone. And work in anything international and this is essentially it. Want to find a smoothie shop in a beach town in Mexico? Instagram/FB + WhatsApp...thats it.

You've nailed it. RIP WordPress and websites. Delete that Safari icon, it's annoying.

Fewer people are opening web pages on their phones. I was wondering why someone would pay so much for a website, and then realized accessing twitter through a web browser on a laptop is not the way. We won't talk about relinquishment of rights, privacy and freedom. I am a curmudgeon doing it all wrong. The way into the walled garden is through the ease of use of popular Apps on the most popular platform: the phone.

Re: WordPress’ market share is shrinking

#188
There was a ramp up of new WordPress and specifically WooCommerce sites starting in late summer of 2020 and spiking huge in December 2020 & January 2021. These are people that were stuck at home due to lockdown or losing their jobs and they started online businesses. The lot of those signed up for 1 or 2 year hosting plans and those came due around Feburary/March of this year. A large amount of those businesses failed, or the owners went back to work, etc etc, and no longer need their sites.

Re: WordPress’ market share is shrinking

#189
post #75
post #23

I think the "private website" space is shrinking - despite what adverts for Wix and Squarespace might infer. The consumer/blog space of geocities, tripod and the like went to social media. Then we went through a period of "businesses putting up 10 pages for a fixed price" through first of all "a local web guy" then by themselves using Wix/WP/SS etc. I've just had a bathroom fitted by a guy who functions purely on Ins…

For years now, I've seen many restaurants rely on an Instagram account instead of an actual website. It's definitely easier for them to create an IG account than to pay someone (or a service) for a website. Also, posting to IG lets them market to their audience (instead of posting it to a website that presumably fewer people visit). Shame since I often want to view their menu, and IG is really aggressive about not sh…

So it sounds like the restaurants are overestimating how well an instagram account responds to their needs. Maybe they do need to invest in a more traditional web page after all. I'll happily disregard any restaurant that forces me to log on whatever platform to view their menu.

Re: WordPress’ market share is shrinking

#190
post #183
post #178

Most users of WordPress would be better served by a static site generator system. Unfortunately, it seems most of these are very much "by developers, for developers" in flavor. They're overly complicated and insufficiently developed in the front-end to be useful to most of WordPress' current target market (e.g., businesses with a need to present mostly static content, but with the ability to make changes and deploy/p…

WordPress can be used as a static site generator via the Simply Statuc plugin. It needs some thought into the design ( which plugins won't work because it isn't dynamic anymore), but it's a decent way of having the UX for non-developers/other very technical folk while having the security, stability, deployability and maintainability of static hosting.

You do realize that this whole concept is an overkill, don't you?

Just think about it: you need to have installed PHP, MySQL / MariaDB, and a plugin to generate static content, whereas with a SSG that exists you go straight to the phase of generating your content.

Personally I plan to use Hugo for tiny to small websites that get updated once in a blue moon and for more complicated websites, I have many options to choose from; for sure WordPress is not one of them and that's a fact!

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