Too many core features are relegated to plugins (eg: custom fields, custom post types, email signups, basic analytics, basic SEO features, caching, etc). These plugins introduce security holes, hijack your dashboard to beg you to upgrade to the paid tier, and don’t play well with each other (eg: a custom post type plugin won’t integrate with custom fields because it can’t know which custom fields plugin you’re using).
And the economics of the Wordpress ecosystem mean that there’s no incentive to fix this and bring more of these critical features into Wordpress core.
I also find the templating system unintuitive compared to something like Mustache that gets out of your way.
For these reasons I’m currently working on an open source batteries included CMS with a specific aim on improving the developer experience compared to Wordpress. It’s early days but always interested in other peoples thoughts on Wordpress’s strengths and weaknesses.
I should also say that despite all my criticisms, Wordpress is a monumental achievement, one of the great open source projects, and the world is so so much better for it. Imagine how much worse things would be it something more like Wix or FrontPage had become the default way to get a website online in the Web 2.0 era.
And the economics of the Wordpress ecosystem mean that there’s no incentive to fix this and bring more of these critical features into Wordpress core.
I also find the templating system unintuitive compared to something like Mustache that gets out of your way.
For these reasons I’m currently working on an open source batteries included CMS with a specific aim on improving the developer experience compared to Wordpress. It’s early days but always interested in other peoples thoughts on Wordpress’s strengths and weaknesses.
I should also say that despite all my criticisms, Wordpress is a monumental achievement, one of the great open source projects, and the world is so so much better for it. Imagine how much worse things would be it something more like Wix or FrontPage had become the default way to get a website online in the Web 2.0 era.