WordPress’ market share is shrinking

Are you running a basic blog? We have some WordPress sites that are sorta unloved, but they are able to use these commercial plugins for a few hundred bucks to enable custom forms, payments, event ticketing, event calendars and they're just one-click installs and some CSS.

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 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.

Even local restaurants seem to be changing - using aggregators as their primary touch-point. Can't really blame them. They can easily submit their static stuff - opening times, location and menu - and the complex stuff like a booking system, taking deposits, sending calendar reminders is just handled by a single entity who's good at this stuff.

WP seems to occupy this weird middle-ground I don't see as being attractive to anyone. As a light user there are dedicated CMS for your industry - for the hardcore, you hand-build it. WP, paying for packages, and being on the hook when they don't play nice - Who-tf is the target market?

Sorta, kinda. Some of us do agency work for clients. We're consulted for our expertise to help medium to large companies avoid pitfalls like vendor lock-in (relevant in this case), performance bottlenecks, and cumbersome content management. We're then paid to implement those solutions in a creative, strategic and compelling way. I don't know if it'll hold my interest, but it was certainly a way to get into the industry. It's a great fit for anyone who's passionate about advertising, marketing, and technology.

I think there's a (perhaps unintentional) true, deeper subtext to what you're saying though. WordPress has become too undifferentiated. There are parts of WP that are very mature and still as of yet unbeaten, but that's not what it takes to stay relevant.

You can add to that "people who manage web hosting servers".

Across our fleet, disabling hacked instances is a routine event. There is often a marketing person that wants to argue - according to their industry, WordPress is leading the security space. It's incredible how different industries view the product.

You underestimate how many small business sites are built with WordPress