Is the multiverse of WordPress in danger?
Tags: wordpress, healthydebate, geek, php
Published: 2023-05-07 15:15:25

I've been maintaining a small plugin for WordPress users over the past years.

I've also used WordPress for various projects, from small websites to big factories (e.g., multisite, multi-networks).

WordPress might do a lot for the popularity of PHP, depsite all the [legitimate] critics you might have against the code.

## Gutenberg or not?

The core team has introduced Gutenberg, a brand new javascript/react-based editor in 2018.

The big change did not come without issues, and a significant part of the WordPress galaxy remains skeptical.

Critics like to highlight popular plugins like "Classic Editor" or "Disable Gutenberg" and their millions of active installs.

While you cannot ignore such statistics, pretty much every time a new feature appears in the core, a new plugin is released to disable it.

With WordPress, it's not a surprise, it's a tradition.

Although, not all plugins reach **millions** of active installations.

## The multiverse of WordPress

WordPress has so many applications and usages, from the free platform for blogs (wordpress.org) to the self-hosting solution for individuals and corporate environments, not to mention all derivated products and projects.

The featured image of this post is a screenshot from the very end of the movie "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," where a mysterious woman appears from nowhere to tell Strange he created an "incursion."

That's a very geeky way to illustrate the problem here, but, in the movie, an incursion happens when two universes collide, which usually leads to the destruction of both.

I sincerely hope WordPress won't end like that, but a significant part of users seem to prefer premium page builders and other third-party solutions to Gutenberg, and this huge ecosystem gets more and more fragmented.

## I keep maintaining both editors

As a plugin maintainer, I like to provide both options, which means my Gutenberg users get a custom integration using React and the Gutenberg API, but others can still use the plugin with a simple metabox.

## The battle for E-commerce seems tough

While the ecosystem has various solutions for E-commerce, for example, the very popular Woocommerce, some companies may be reluctant to use WordPress for various reasons, including the following:

* self-hosted e-commerce is difficult to secure and maintain (not specific to WordPress)
* competitors are impressive: Square, Shopify
* Gutenberg was not meant to boost such usages, and there's not so many blocks available for E-commerce
* big payment plaftorms like Stripe tend to provide their own integration for static websites which removes the hassle of databases and other dynamic frameworks

WordPress may no longer attract all young businesses that need to go online quickly with minimum efforts and budget.

## Wrap up

I know there are lots of posts that speculate on the potential death of frameworks or even programming languages.

We know for sure that the main goal of Gutenberg was full site editing (FSE), and users can already enjoy the first versions of this global WYSIWYG editor (not just for posts), but I genuinely wonder what the future holds for this CMS.

Competition is great, and I don't think WordPress _itself_ aims to keep this kind of monopolistic position for eternity.