The podcast explores WordPress' identity crisis, challenges with custom post types and relationship fields, limitations and solutions in WordPress development, risks of auto-updates, importance of backups, and the platform's evolution towards full site editing. The discussion highlights the impact of WordPress in web development and the community's opinions on its role.
WordPress's versatility, from blogs to eCommerce sites, stems from plugins like WooCommerce, ACF, and Elementor, fostering its popularity.
WordPress faces an identity crisis due to limitations like no disaster recovery, reliance on plugins, and discontent with its evolution.
WordPress's evolution towards a modern website builder with FSE ignites a debate on maintaining core publishing functionality while integrating block-based editing.
Deep dives
WordPress Identity Crisis: Balancing Between Code-Free and Custom Coding
The podcast episode delves into the identity crisis faced by WordPress, particularly focusing on whether WordPress serves as a no-code tool or necessitates custom coding. The discussion highlights the transition from a blogging platform to a website builder, emphasizing the challenges faced in terms of limitations and complexities experienced during web development projects. The debate revolves around finding a balance between user-friendly features like plugins, Elementor Pro, and Advanced Custom Fields, alongside the need for custom coding solutions to address WordPress's evolving landscape.
Navigating WordPress Limitations: The Impact on Development Projects
The episode sheds light on the unexpected limits encountered while working with WordPress, ranging from issues like hitting unforeseen constraints to challenges with disabling comments or managing updates. Specific examples, such as the inability to filter activities based on relationship fields or the lack of built-in disaster recovery tools, underscore the practical implications of these limitations on web development tasks and the reliance on plugins to extend functionality.
Empowering Users Through Site Editing: The Evolution of WordPress Functionality
The discussion covers the evolution of WordPress functionality with the introduction of full-site editing (FSE), transforming the platform into a modern website builder with block-based editing capabilities akin to Squarespace and Wix. However, the debate surrounding the identity crisis of WordPress arises from the simultaneous shift towards a comprehensive site editor and the ongoing reliance on plugins to enhance block options and address feature gaps. This balance between becoming a sophisticated website builder and retaining its core publishing functionality reflects WordPress's journey from a blogging platform to a versatile web development tool.
Concerns About Basic Features and Identity Crisis in WordPress
WordPress users and developers express concerns about the lack of basic features in WordPress such as disaster recovery and ease of use beyond simple blogging. The episode highlights frustrations with the reliance on plugins for essential functionality and the subscription-based model for many features, leading to a growing identity crisis where users expect more from the platform. Developers stress the need for continuous payment for ongoing support and updates, raising questions about WordPress's evolution and whether it adequately serves both basic and advanced user needs.
Suggestions for WordPress's Future Development
The podcast hosts propose potential directions for WordPress's development, suggesting it should focus on being a core platform for developers to build upon, similar to React in the JavaScript framework ecosystem. They recommend bundling common plugins like Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) into the core functionality and offering different WordPress packages tailored to specific user needs, such as customer-facing or developer-focused sites. Emphasizing simplicity and flexibility, the hosts advocate for enhancing disaster recovery, user-friendly customization, and a streamlined installation process to address the platform's current limitations and complexities.
WordPress is a very popular tool for making websites that can be easily extended to get the job done. While the original focus of WordPress was blogs, over time other websites started being created with it through the use of plugins like WooCommerce (eCommerce sites), ACF (dynamic data-driven sites), and Elementor (sites that can be built visually). This versatility fuels WordPress' continued popularity, but also brews a community that believes it's a bloated and dated tool. Having recently make a website with WordPress, Matt takes us through a deep dive of what he believes is an identity crisis stemming from Gutenberg/FSE, no built-in disaster recovery, and limitations forcing the use of multiple plugins.