I really don't want to have to switch from WordPress but this fiasco is putting decades of work in question.
That in mind, I'm hoping a list of the best qualities of WordPress, including everyone's thoughts, might help is focus on what's minimally amazing about WordPress.
Some of my thoughts:
* My code / my site – I can take it anywhere
* CMS is free
* Not a platform, it's more like interoperable pieces
* Themes separate from design
* Features (plugins) separate from CMS or theme
* Updates can be avoided
* Everything can be forked to personalize
Maybe I'm completely lost in what I'm thinking or why, I'm not a hardcore WordPress dev, just someone who has built on and used it since 2004. Maybe I'm getting something wrong, please forgive me.
Other minimum viable capabilities? Anything out there worth consideration?
No other alternative will provide the gigantic ecosystem that WP has and all the tools, knowledge and material in it.
Similarly, there is no way the industry, the web, and even countries/economic zones will let something that runs ~43% of all websites on the internet go down under. They would fork it if need be. Even state-funded forks are possible – certain Eu countries have state-run funds to fund open source projects.
This is a trademark/financial fight in between two middle size corporations and investment funds. If things go out of hand way too much, even regulators could step in. Nobody will let 43% of the internet and ~30% of all ecommerce sites to descend into chaos.
So all these discussions about ‘moving out’ are moot.
Plugin developer here.
Nothing visible technically about WordPress to site owners has changed except:
1. A prominent free plugin, Advanced Custom Fields, has suffered an intentional supply-chain attack by the operator of its supply chain (wordpress.org’s plugin repo).
2. Sites hosted on a particular hosting provider (WP Engine) have recently had some difficulties getting updates.
From my perspective as a sometime code contributor, free plugin author and site owner, there has been a big administrative change. The operator of my supply chain has shown **willingness to weaponize that supply chain** in a business dispute.
I Don’t Like That.
I honestly hope WordPress.com’s owner will publish something addressed to people like me to reassure us we should continue to contribute.
But WordPress is still as good as ever, and it still serves the original dream of the internet, which is that anybody can have their own presence on the World Wide Web, under their own control, at a reasonable cost. Making that possible is why I do what I do for the WordPress community.
Putting decades of work in question… That’s a bit of an overreaction don’t you think? It’s a cause for concern and monitoring, but it’s still playing out.