Reasons Why People Hate WordPress (Including WordPress Drama)

WordPress has been good to me. I make my living out of helping individuals and organizations build membership and community-building-focused websites in the eLearning space using WordPress as a critical technology solution.

However, nothing is perfect, and WordPress has some significant problems, which we are going to discuss in this post. On the other hand, I still consider it the best, most powerful, and most flexible CMS (contact management system) solution and website-building management platform that you can use to build a successful online business in 2023.

The imperfections of WordPress were recently placed in front of my consciousness when I watched this video by Darrel Wilson, who runs one of the most popular YouTube channels focusing on WordPress, website development, and online marketing. Let's look at some of WordPress's fundamental weaknesses, and by doing this, you then have the complete picture, and then you can decide whether WordPress is still the right solution for you.

Here is a rough list of the main problems connected to using WordPress...

#1 - WordPress.org VS WordPress.com

#2 - Constant Updates

#3 - Security Issues

#4 - Constant UI Changes

#5 - Subscription Model

#6 - No Enforcement

#7 - Spam Notices

#8 - White Screen Of Death

#9 - Speed

#10 - Volunteer Dilemma

#11 - WordPress And Drama

#12 - Matt Mullenweg (the joint founder of WordPress)

I don't plan to go through all of the above points in this post because I discuss them all in this recent episode of "This Week in WordPress & SaaS" video. However, I do plan to take a couple of what I see as the most significant problems and expand my thoughts around what you need to understand.

#1 - WordPress.org VS WordPress.com

This causes so much confusion for the new user when a first-time user thinks of using WordPress.com as a cut-down and fully hosted version. Now, with their eBusiness option, it overlaps what WordPress.org offers connected to eCommerce but trying to explain to a client the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org is painful.

#6 - No Enforcement

When a new minor or more prominent business owner deals with WordPress.org and the 60 thousand-plus plugins and themes, they are dealing with the Wild West, especially regarding pro-version plugins and themes. However, for the first time in many years, there seems to be some movement on this front. See what Matt Mullenweg had to say recently in his "State of the Word 2022" presentation.

#11 - WordPress And Drama

This doesn't directly affect the new user, but to be honest, the WordPress community has a small but very vocal "Twitter Warrior" toxic element, which has a radical political and racial agenda. This element uses Twitter to attempt to control the wider WordPress professional community through blackballing individuals and coordinated personal attacks against people who don't share their political views.

Conclusions

I don't want the business owner to get the wrong impression here. WordPress is the best and most powerful platform for building a great website. However, nothing is perfect, and although WordPress does have some real problems, in my opinion, none of them should be a real deal breaker.