242 - 'Q' is for Quibbles

‘A-Z of WordPress’ with Nathan Wrigley and David Waumsley

It’s another A-Z of WordPress. The series where we attempt to cover all the major aspects of building and maintaining sites with WordPress.  Today is for Q for Quibble…

Preamble

He’s probably never said it, but quibble sounds like a perfect Rowan Atkinson word (not the Johnny English or Mr. Bean rubbish, but early standup and Blackadder genius).

Anyway…  A quibble is a slight objection or criticism about a trivial matter and here we are looking at those objections and criticism from both outside the WordPress community and from within.

Criticism of WP from the wider world ?

Regular users

• Insecure (94% of all Infected CMSs are WordPress according to Sucuri)
• Difficult to use
• Hidden costs – premium plugins
• Hidden time cost – updates, conflict, managing hosting
• Looking a bit outdated
• It’s not SaaS, you need to maintain it

Business users

• Lack of support – community support
• Liability
• Terms of the licences (build something and in theory you have to make it GPL if you want to resell it)
• Stability – massive changes (https://wptavern.com/w3c-drops-wordpress-from-consideration-for-redesign-narrows-cms-shortlist-to-statamic-and-craft)
• Almost 2 million lines of code before you start

General objections of WP from the wider world ?

• Too common
• Too generic
• Too much a (pretentious) blogging platform
• Not pay-to-play, set it and forget it

Positives:

Most criticisms are simply the result of the freedoms offered. Most objections are misunderstandings.

Criticism of WP from within ?

• Notifications
• Adverts in the WordPress admin panel
• Acquisitions
• Sometime lack focus on performance (global bloat with jQuery, emojis even the block editor for some)
• Media library
• Overload of choice
• Plugin conflicts

Objections of WP from within ?

• The GPL blowup with Thesis (Chris Pearson and Brian Gardner Revolution / Genesis)
• Gutenberg being forced upon the community and the need for governance (https://wpgovernance.com – Rachel Cherry and Morten Rand-Hendriksen)
• Authors ability to change what a plugin does (and change author without notice)
• Hidden affiliate marketing: Astra and Awesome Motive
• Automattic’s role and use of the WordPress name
• Having dominance over the Ecommerce in WordPress

https://wptavern.com/wordpress-com-rattles-freelancer-community-with-new-website-building-service-launch

Positives:

Criticisms are mostly a sign we care and are engaged. Sometimes too much! It’s only software – quite trivial really when you think about it!

Final thoughts 

David:

I can’t imagine not using WordPress. I have concerns about the influence of big business. The role of Automattic and large (often hosting) companies.

But I am optimistic about people and the talent within the ecosystem. I suspect with things I don’t like now I will be happily proved right or wrong.

In the meantime I will still continue to use WordPress to enjoy learning and working, pay the bills, connect me to interesting people and provide me with lots of personal freedom.

Nathan:

I’m really happy with WordPress and the direction that it’s going in. The Block Editor does what I need and the roadmap is certainly shaping up to offer most of what I need to build a website.

I really like the community that we have and it’s enabled me to meet so many new people and enjoy talking to them about their products and experiences.

I have no doubt that in the future WordPress will continue to be the tool that I’m using, dare I say it… even if something ‘better’ turns up!