So I had my own Web Design agency back in 2014 to about 2016. I wanted to build very custom projects using (then popular) CodeIgniter and Silex, and later Laravel 4. However, clients would come already asking for WordPress, so we did alot of that.
Anyways, I came to absolutely hate it. I hated the premium theme scene (everything was just Avada) and every theme had Visual Builder (Elementor was not on the scene yet), RevSlider or LayerSlider. WooComerce was never enough out of the box for people who wanted ecommerce, and premium plugins were always needed. And every theme had its own way of using theme settings, often through a custom page and class, so trying to tweak them was a nightmare everytime.
Security and upgrading were a huge problem. Most of my time was recovering hacked or broken websites only months after I deployed them and handed over access to the clients.
Worst of all, WordPress IS NOT the cheaper option for clients than choosing something like Squarespace which was easier to use for clients and a much nicer experience overall. After domain, hosting, premium plugins and the cost of development time it was thousands for even the most basic site (many of which I knew would never be edited, and could have been a plain HTML site)
So I started turning down clients who came asking for a WordPress site unless they would consider a SaaS alternative, and shortly after I was working for a large company as a Laravel dev, and I’ve been doing that ever since.
Anyways, I hadn’t touched WordPress until about 2 weeks ago. I started a new job and they have their own theme they built and needed it modernized for some upcoming projects.
So I setup WPCLI and got to installing. I opened up the 2024 theme …and the blocks editor kinda blew me away. I’d completely missed all that I guess. Gutenberg was a beta plugin when I quit.
So today I decided to learn how to make the current theme (based on an old underscores setup) ‘blocks ready’. And after 2 hours I was done. The templating syntax is great, and the theme.json stuff is super easy to get to grips with. Also the usability of the blocks editor is miles ahead of Visual Builder or Element or…both of which I detest!
So yeah, I’m actually liking what WordPress is doing. I’m impressed. Whoever came up with the way it’s done deserves a pat on the back. It’s really nice.
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Yeah it’s moved on quite a bit, although working with FSE can be a mixed bag. It’s also slow, and can be more confusing for end-users. But it’s also a pretty amazing technical achievement, and is being improved all the time.
The Twenty Twenty Four theme makes a lot of paid themes obsolete right now, imo. And Avada? Oooof. I had that one. Worst bloated theme of my life. It’s taking them forever to release version 8.0 because they realized they need to get with the program and transition over to blocks.
With the Twenty Twenty Four theme, there isn’t much else you need, besides a few plugins for things like image optimization and ACF.
For my personal site, I built out a custom theme from Underscores while still using the block editor for the main content. However, the last three WP sites I made for a couple of musicians were on the Twenty Twenty Four theme. There are many YouTube videos of some great work people did with the theme, too.
Well, good software does improve with time. Especially when it’s got 40+% of the marketshare…
Yes, it’s gotten monumentally better since 2018 when block editor was introduced. From there it’s been hit and miss with major improvements only recently coming with v6+. Now with Block Themes and FSE, it’s freakin’ fantastic. You can make custom blocks natively or using ACF and PHP which respects the native block.json structure.
With the most recent release, we get Interactivity API, block hooks, and so much more.
I’d revisit the Developer docs on [wordpress.org](http://wordpress.org) and get familiar with the most recent iteration.
The premium themes, and the site builder plugins are mostly horrible. WP out of the box is a good simple system.
You have a good point about sites that could be static HTML. It would save a lot of time and money for a lot of clients.
I can’t really comment on premium stuff, as I always just write my own themes/plugins (or customize free stuff) for the most part… but yes, WordPress has gotten exponentially better over the last 10 years. Most software does when it has the kind of market share WordPress does, especially when it’s open source and has literally millions of users developing for it.
Check out Bricks Builder + Automatic CSS + Frames by Automatic CSS. You’ll never go back.
I remember the time when Avada was everything and everywere 😀
Elementor and hello theme can fix majority of web design needs
Not to be mean but the _underscores project has been around all that time and Beaver Builder was around in 2014 (after years as an in-house production tool) and Elementor was released in 2016. So even back then it was absolutely unnecessary to use ThemeForest shovelware like Avada, X, Enfold, or the bazillion hack job themes that bundled “custom” versions of WPBakery, Layerslider, etc.
Those things were particularly bad security nightmares because, since the “bonus” plugins were licensed by the vendors you could only update them if and when the theme vendor issued an update. No matter how egregious the vulnerability in, oh, say, Visual Composer, if the theme vendor wasn’t around (or, often as not, out of business!) your site was basically a sitting duck.
And yeah, WordPress has gotten a lot more professional and (thank goodness!) those premium theme-factory themes are becoming less and less relevant.
Really glad you’ve found your way back. Since the rollout of Project Gutenberg in 2019 WordPress has gotten almost infinitely better for developers. At least compared to the bad old days.
The actual editor UI/UX is a ham-fisted dumpster fire, but the development environment for blocks is a *huge* improvement for professional programmers.
I fail to see how you were having so many issues with WordPress development back in 2014 – 2016. I’ve been actually developing websites for 15 or so years on WordPress and have never had any of the issues you’ve mentioned because I developed/created my own themes. You’re always going to run into some sort of issue or limitation if you choose to use pre-made themes / solutions.
Premium plugins/extensions are something that exist on a wide range of CMS’ as well, not just WordPress, so that point is pretty irrelevant IMO. The vast majority of websites don’t even need premium plugins either, with free options being more than enough and/or custom development to deliver the specific feature that’s needed being a cheaper/more manageable option.
What do you suggest (on wordpress) for someone with no code language knowledge to make a nice and simple business site? I made my site with elementor but I want to remove some plugins and make It simplier to manage. I don’t need a fancy site, just a header menu and info pages and a contact form. Is default WordPress good enough right now?
cool
Damn i had clients who wanted a specific theme which i had to turn down, or write my own theme since they are so bloated and done in such a fashion that editing simple stuff like the header or footer was done through widgets, and they always be in another place, sometimes just a part of the footer was editable through the widgets, rest theme options and hidden away.
Nowadays its so much simpler. Whichever Builder you use.
WordPress has spent a lot of time working to fight against the advanced WYSIWYG editors such as SquareSpace, Wix, etc, and they are doing an okay job. WordPress developers who relied on the arcane and obtuse programing to sell complicated themes haven’t been as happy.
I too have enjoyed what WordPress has developed, although most of my sites are too technically indebted to their current platforms and environments.
Yea it’s amazing and Avada is absolutely incredible these days. I’ve being selling wordpress websites since 2014, it’s being a hell of a journey.