Hello all. I’m primarily a Digital Marketer working across areas and apps (web, social media, content, etc). I do a bit of everything, but it was never my plan to be a web developer or anything like that. I am very technically proficient outside of coding.
As time goes on, more and more people keep asking for my help. So I’ve gotten to know WordPress, tech/plugin stacks, and hosting/server stuff more and more.
I’ve got some questions and thoughts below that I just cannot understand about WordPress. If you have anything to say about any of them, please do!
QUESTIONS/THOUGHTS
1) Why does WordPress allow plugins to put messages anywhere across the dashboard?
Most of these messages are annoying ads that you cannot ever get rid of. It makes the context of knowing what you’re looking at incredibly difficult unless you’re already very familiar with the plugin or menu.
This one aspect is already annoying. But why is it that I cannot close these messages (even when provided with an X?). They act like critical system messages and always show up unless I’ve done the action they are asking me to do.
2) Why does WordPress and many plugins have features or workflows that contextually would go together in completely different menus?
One example is editing the menu or menus. Why is there a section where I need to “create” a menu that is separate from the default header editor? Or the other settings in the Appearance section?
Flows like this force me to complete multiple steps because of different contexts, making my work feel redundant and like putting puzzle pieces together.
3) Why are there so many features that require a plug-in instead of being native?
My biggest gripe is that WordPress is so dense and not intuitive, yet still manages to not have features I think they absolutely should.
One example is having some amount of activity data logged somewhere (even if just temporarily). I can see this sort of thing across all other apps I use to pinpoint who edited what. Not WordPress! It’s difficult in a situation with multiple collaborators at different skill levels.
4) Why are popular apps and their plugin add-ons often panned or criticized, yet there’s no better solution in the plugin marketplace?
My example is using WooCommerce (Store). For some reason, they don’t have appointments features built-in. But their add-on app has 3 stars max in reviews and is clunky. For this example, you have to go third-party to make it work.
None of the apps I found for this was straightforward. It took me hours to link up and test any of them. And there were considerable issues often. What gives?
I would have thought by now there would be WordPress plugin developers sweeping the floor with more intuitive apps and plugins that are not clunky. The market is often very lackluster in terms of intuitiveness and reliability.
5) Why does everyone online relating to WordPress expect me to be able to code or develop apps?
Seriously, this is my biggest gripe. To do simple operations in WordPress sometimes require heavier technical expertise.
Everyone’s attitude online is that you’re clearly a web developer if you’re using WordPress. So I should clearly know HTML, CSS, PhP, SQL, JavaScript, and anything else possible. And all responses are tailored to such individuals, especially by third-party plugin creators who are bootstrapping some of the most popular plugins. They almost scoff at the idea you don’t understand these skills. Then why did I bother downloading a plugin in the first place?
I didn’t come here to learn all of that. Why is that an assumption? If I needed all of those skills, why would I only use WordPress? I feel like there are better tools out there for full-stack and web developers.
6) How are there not clear, curated tech stacks for starting a functional WP website?
This bothers me so much. Anything you end up finding is either a sales pitch for a plugin or a stack with junk plugins (giving the same feeling as the apps Windows puts on PCs that are junk). Not to mention, these (AI-written?) articles make it sound like certain things work together when they do not or have caveats.
There are really no authors or creators who have a straightforward tech stack. I understand this may be difficult at first, but my content marketing brain cannot see why this is still an issue.
There will always be tons of plugins. But there are so many common ones. At this point, I’d expect an article telling me great plugins compatible with Elementor (that are ACTUALLY compatible together also if I use them – like DUH?!).
The point is, to find a starting tech stack that actually works well together for your needs is just far more difficult than it should be. And primarily, there is no guide on having the slimmest WP website possible in this regard. You’re on your own, need a matrix for compatibility, and have to endlessly test and hope nothing breaks.
CONCLUSION
I’ve found my way with WordPress, but I can never stop thinking about how it can be so clunky and everyone either heavily celebrates it or doesn’t seem to care.
I just think this platform could be so much better for both more experienced and less experienced users.
It often feels like a race to the bottom with this platform. Do you have any takes? Is there something I’m missing?
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> So I should clearly know HTML, CSS, PhP, SQL, JavaScript, and anything else possible…
Yes.
> I didn’t come here to learn all of that.
There are better places to learn all of that, like MDN, w3schools etc. (https://developer.wordpress.org/advanced-administration/resources/)
Sorry if I am harsh, but those are tools of our trade.
3) Because it’s trim this way. Separation of concerns
5) Because doing WordPress properly does actually require proper dev work. Despite what the page builder tools would like you to think.
6) There is. It used to be a LAMP stack. Now you could use nginx instead of apache. Either way, the stack is defined and consistent.
The answer to every single one of your questions is “because open source”
I still don’t know why a lot of Woo’s plugins are such crap. They have the money and dev team to make them great but here we are.
> there is no guide on having the slimmest WP website:
https://wordpress.org/documentation/
https://learn.wordpress.org
https://developer.wordpress.org
Because it is cheap(er). Building a whole e-commerce site without wp is many times(10x) more expensive and therefore developers and clients put up with it.
Decent developer has done a lot of work when building with WP to use proven and tested tech stack, with modified menus/admin areas. But these are also developers whose sites cost couple times more than normal.
There is no incentive for a bottom of the price bracket developer to invest in it. Their market is cheap and fast. And clients choose with they wallet.
Tldr there are good solutions out there in WP land, but less people willing to pay for the Devs who do this. So the main image of WP is poorer. But the segment is out there.
> 3) Why are there so many features that require a plug-in instead of being native?
My biggest gripe is that WordPress is so dense and not intuitive, yet still manages to not have features I think they absolutely should.
Everyone has their own problems & needs. If WordPress added a feature for every need, it’d be a bloated mess and people would be complaining of having unnecessary features they don’t use.
You would like Drupal ecosystem so much more! It is more programmer oriented and less.. commercial. It has many properties you find lacking in WordPress. But it has other issues of its own.
WordPress itself is very slim, as it wasn’t really meant to be used for heavy websites. Optionally you can extend the feature set with plugins. Now everyone wants to make money from selling “premium” plugins, so there are multiple solutions to each problem. Sadly most of the plugins are clunky and resource heavy – this is why most WP sites consume lots of memory.
If you really want to create an extremely well performing WP site with lots of custom features, you must know how to code. Otherwise using plugins is the only way. Still, some CSS knowledge is almost mandatory in my opinion.
The basic tech stack that is quite popular (and easy to find): Linux, Apache, MariaDB, php or LAMP for short. This provides everything you need to host a website. But hosting is a completely different skillset.
People on the internet want you to think that it’s child’s play to create an awesome website. **It is not.** It takes countless hours, lots of trial and error, programming custom functions (for example: to have the Astra search box redirect to the WP search you have add a couple lines of code to the child theme’s php file).
Then you have to host that site somewhere; you have to consider memory and CPU limits, scaling possibilities, etc. If you are going with a VPS you have to set that up yourself, monitor and maintain it.
I have created my own website and I can completely understand why even a WordPress site costs as much as it does, especially if it has multiple custom functions.
From the technical side my opinion is that WP is horrible. That “lets see how we can bend over and spank post types today” approach for example From the tech side CMS like Joomla are way more sophisticated. Making clear differences between Data, Router and Template and what is what.
WPs large market share comes from a speedy setup, and a low entry barrier for devs and users.
But one can’t ignore it and have to work with it for some time now it seems.
3, WP is the engine that enables your website to move.
What it actually does once it moves is up to you (features), similarly with how it looks (themes).
Not everyone wants flared arches, a turbo or tinted glass, but, there’s no doubt a plugin for that.
Remember WP is an open-source project. It sounds like you are looking for a way to create a website that matches your exact specifications without learning to code or paying for a product. This does not exist.
Number 5 is funny to me because I have the opposite problem as a developer. When googling a solution you have to wade through content aimed at non-devs “just install this plugin”!