I love WordPress, but I don't like its ecosystem
Tags: wordpress, php
Published: 2019-12-21 15:24:21

Come gather round friends and I'll tell you a tale
Of when I claimed to be a WordPress guru
But was then made to use off-the-shelf themes and plugins
And that claim I sought to undo

I've been using WordPress to solve content management problems for clients in the digital publishing industry for around 10 years and know its core features pretty well having spent countless hours traversing through the codex and reading a plethora of problem-solving developer articles.    

I am an advocate for the software and push it as a low-cost, easy to use, extensible and familiar content editing & publishing platform for digital publishing teams.

From a developer perspective the core provides a very good and efficient Query Engine, Database Abstraction Layer, Rest API Framework, User / Roles management and loads more.

It also provides a decent admin interface that is intuitive and adaptable enough that I can tailor it to specific business requirements. 

##What's not to like? 

Well, last year I assumed the role of "WordPress Guru". 

Up until then I had been using WordPress as a toolkit for building a unique set of features for my clients. I would be writing a lot of specific business logic around this toolkit just as you would a framework.

At the time of accepting this role I didn't know which sites I'd be working on and just assumed that, armed with this knowledge, I should be able to handle it right?

##But I was wrong!

You see, there is, in my opinion, a "Dark Side" to WordPress - its Theme and Plugin culture.

It's not like I was unfamiliar with this and whenever I'd read up or hear of this culture I thought it was individuals or small businesses on small budgets looking to get a website up as cheap as possible and that it shouldn't apply to serious businesses or organisations. 

##I was wrong again!

I used the term "Dark Side" because I would be dealing with content managers that have a business requirement for something that is more flexible than the feature-restrictive theme or plugin. At some point this system was sold to them either by someone in-house or a developer that is now long gone. 

The first problem is you have a client that doesn't understand "why" this feature is difficult to implement (they're right - it shouldn't be, if this system was built properly). 
The second is the developer trying to shoehorn features into this system knowing it's not really fit for purpose thus making their ongoing maintenance work more difficult.
 
Sometimes you have to do things like "modify core code" of plugins only to learn of a "major security update" some weeks later that you now have to factor in.

Sites end up becoming a maintenance and security headache.

##Lesson learned

I will never claim to be a "WordPress Guru" again as putting me in an environment where I have to build or extend sites that use WooThemes or Divi (for example) then I am lost!

Someone who is a "WordPress Guru" would understand the entire ecosystem of available WordPress products - not just its core system.  

My advice for publishers is if you are looking at purchasing a Theme or Plugin to handle a feature you're needing make sure it does EVERYTHING you're ever going to need. 

Otherwise consult a developer - there are some good quality plugins that allow themselves to be extended by using custom hooks and filters, perhaps enough so to fill the void in requirements.