Will WordPress ever be truly Designer-friendly?

To begin with, I am a huge WordPress supporter and continue to be, beyond the statements I'm going to make. As a designer, WordPress is still not where I'd love it to be, and I doubt it will ever be. Furthermore, WordPress will continue to lose ground on non-enterprise jobs.

Here are my thoughts on WordPress for designers now, and beyond:

one.

While the enterprise is driven by deeper and wider decision systems, for the masses it comes down to "Easy" and "Pretty". Most projects don't require the extensive architecture and extensibility WordPress comes with. Despite that, for the time being WordPress is still the most popular go-to. It does power over 40% of the websites so far (estimate).

two.

The "Easy" and "Pretty" are marketing attributes, and designers love sticking the fingers in the marketing jar. With all the love and respect I have for engineers, they don't hold the reach (as a mean value) that designers do when they launch and promote a project. We're visual creatures.

As such, more and more of the projects that will make noise will be coming from platforms that fully enable designers to turn their dreams, and needs into reality. No/low code tools like Webflow and Framer will continue their rise. And they will be challenged by other upcoming tools, and most likely AI-powered builders as well.

Designers need their playgrounds, and are very noisy about their achievements. That creates excitements and demand.

three.

Even with Gutenberg, block themese and full site editing, even with Elementor, or any other builder, designers will still struggle to accomplish their vision. The process is built in a way that at some point it still requires you to go under the hood if you want to do a spotless job. Most designers hate going under the hood if not necessary. We love to design.

four.

What do we do when we need to go under the hood? Well, it depends on our expertise and skill set as designers. Some things we might achieve, some not. And we either end up cursing and promising ourselves we'll never take another WP project, or we partner up with a developer.

But when this decision is forced upon a designer because they don't have control over how a content piece displays on mobile without cooking up code, than know that designers hate having their creative power taken away from them. And then...

five.

Some designers will team up with engineers. A larger chunk with migrate. But know full well this: WordPress will never become the tool that designers fully create with, without boundaries. Why?

Because while designers are great marketers they are also not the people that keep WordPress alive and growing as an Open Source solution.

It's the Engineers that do that, and they deserve full respect for it.

six.

Turning WordPress into a designer's dream means cutting out Engineers from the ecosystem, and thus cutting out the one true, sustainable source of maintenance and growth of the product. It will never happen.

So, what next?

So, if you're a designer waiting for WordPress to become your dream web-building tool, maybe it's time to:

A. Explore partnerships with developers. There are lots of them out there, with insanely good skill sets.

B. Explore other platforms that allow you to do the job with less friction. WordPress is not going away, but it's also not going to become a design tool, even with all its updates. It won't be the de-facto web-building tool of designers (for long).

WordPress will not minimize/neutralize the role of engineers, not now, not ever. And they shouldn't.