WordPress is still the default answer for “we need a website” for a lot of businesses. Not just because it’s popular, or because there are endless themes and plugins, or because someone on staff has used it before.
WordPress stays relevant because there is always something to talk about.
There is always another fix. Another approach. Another “best practice.” Another heated thread explaining why a setup is wrong, why a plugin is dangerous, why a theme is outdated, why a host is the problem, why the editor is the problem, why a security scan is screaming, why a dashboard is slow, why an update changed behavior, why someone’s client is unhappy, why a site is suddenly broken, why a workflow is hard, why a build feels messy, why the “right” way is different depending on who you ask.
That never-ending conversation has become part of the product.
And if you’ve spent any time in WordPress Facebook groups, subreddits, support forums, Stack Overflow threads, or GitHub comment chains, you know exactly what I mean. WordPress has a unique kind of gravity: it pulls people into discussion cycles where the platform itself becomes the topic—often more than the website being built.
That is not a healthy way for a platform to stay relevant. It is visibility, but it’s the wrong kind.
WordPress doesn’t just have an ecosystem. It has a support economy.
WordPress powers a huge share of the web—as they claim, around 43% of all websites and about 60% of sites using a known CMS, depending on how you measure it. (Although, it could be in reality, significantly less.)
At that scale, you’re guaranteed an endless stream of issues and opinions. But WordPress goes further than “large user base”:
- Most sites are assembled from many third-party pieces (themes, plugins, page builders, add-ons, integrations, custom snippets).
- Most WordPress sites are maintained by non-specialists (or by busy marketing departments working with limited support).
- Every site becomes a unique stack—a one-off combination of choices made over years.
So the conversation never stabilizes. Even when two businesses both “use WordPress,” they’re often dealing with entirely different realities.
That’s where the drama comes from.
Not gossip-drama. Systems-drama.
The kind of drama where a business owner just wanted to publish content, but now they’re trying to understand caching layers, database cleanup, form deliverability, “why the editor is slow,” why SEO settings are scattered, why their theme conflicts with something else, and why everyone online has a different answer.
WordPress doesn’t just ship software. It ships a lifestyle of ongoing troubleshooting.
The platform gives you infinite options, then makes you live with them
The WordPress community has an unusual amount of passionate debate around:
- How to build pages (core blocks vs builders vs custom blocks)
- How to structure content (custom fields vs blocks vs patterns)
- How to handle performance (server tuning vs caching plugins vs code changes)
- How to handle security (hardening guides, scanners, patch cycles, vendor debates)
- How to handle SEO (which plugin, which settings, which schema approach)
- How to handle email deliverability (SMTP plugins, APIs, DNS, sender reputation)
- How to handle hosting (shared vs managed vs VPS, edge caching, object caching)
- How to handle updates (auto updates, staging workflows, testing policies)
There are “solutions” for all of it. And that sounds like a strength—until you realize what it means day-to-day.
It means the platform isn’t giving you a clear path. It’s giving you a marketplace of paths, and you inherit the responsibility of choosing, integrating, and maintaining them.
This creates constant discussion because the real product experience is not WordPress itself. It’s the process of operating WordPress.
WordPress support channels are a living monument to friction
If you want a snapshot of WordPress culture, don’t look at the marketing. Look at the support threads.
The WordPress.org plugin support forums alone are an endless scroll of unresolved issues, compatibility questions, and configuration debates.
Zoom out to Stack Overflow and you get years of “how do I fix this” posts that turn into long comment wars about architecture, best practices, and which compromise is least painful.
Zoom out again to the WordPress core contribution world and you find a second layer: debates about direction, priorities, workflows, and governance—often distributed across Trac, Make.WordPress, and mirrored discussions on GitHub. Even WordPress’s own GitHub mirror is explicit about the fact that it’s not where final merges happen, which tells you how much process and history sits behind every change.
This is the part people rarely say out loud:
WordPress has become a platform where conversation is constant because uncertainty is constant.
When a platform feels steady, the community mostly talks about what they’re creating.
When a platform feels unstable, the community talks about how to survive it.
The WordPress vs. WP Engine conflict
A platform this large is going to have politics. But WordPress has turned internal conflict into public narrative.
The legal dispute and drama involving WP Engine and Automattic has been covered widely, and it’s not just “industry news.” It has real implications for perception, trust, and the idea of what WordPress is and who it serves.
Whether someone takes one side or the other, the effect is the same: it adds another layer of noise around WordPress that has nothing to do with building a great website for a business.
And it reinforces the core pattern:
WordPress stays in the conversation because WordPress is always in a fight—technical, cultural, or legal.
That isn’t a strategy. It’s a symptom.
Why other platforms don’t generate the same kind of drama
To be clear, every platform has problems. Every platform has bugs. Every platform has strong opinions.
But the shape of the conversation is different in modern systems because the foundations are different.
Here’s the practical contrast.
1) Fewer moving parts means fewer public arguments
Modern platforms generally reduce the number of third-party pieces required for a stable baseline.
- Webflow ships an integrated editing and design environment.
- Shopify ships commerce as a managed product.
- Headless CMS platforms like Storyblok and Contentful ship structured content, roles, workflows, and publishing controls as first-class capabilities.
You still make choices, but you’re not typically assembling a fragile tower of dependencies just to get to “normal.”
Even market share data hints at this difference: WordPress dominates, but platforms like Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, and Webflow are meaningfully present because many businesses prefer fewer decisions and a more managed baseline.
2) The conversation shifts from “fixing” to “building”
When the platform takes responsibility for more of the baseline, the community conversation changes.
Instead of endless threads about what plugin combination is safe, you get more:
- implementation patterns
- design system approaches
- integration strategies
- content modeling examples
- launch and growth tactics
In other words, conversation about outcomes.
3) The stakes of updates are different
In WordPress, updates often land in an environment filled with third-party dependencies. That’s why update anxiety is so common: you’re not just updating WordPress—you’re updating your entire stack.
In more modern setups, critical systems are usually:
- managed
- versioned
- tested as a cohesive product
- less dependent on random third-party add-ons
That doesn’t mean “no issues.” It means fewer surprises that force businesses into emergency mode.
The uncomfortable truth: drama is doing marketing work WordPress didn’t earn
WordPress gets constant attention because it creates constant situations.
The drama creates:
- content (blog posts, videos, courses, “fix guides”)
- community activity (threads, arguments, hot takes)
- vendor opportunities (plugins, hosting, maintenance retainers)
- recurring demand (ongoing support, rebuilds, migrations, audits)
It’s an attention loop.
But attention is not the same as progress.
A business platform should be judged by what it enables: speed, reliability, governance, performance, integration capability, and ongoing effort. Not by how much conversation it generates about its own friction.
What “rethinking your platform” should mean in 2026
If you’re evaluating whether WordPress is still the right foundation, avoid framing it as “WordPress vs everything else.”
Ask better questions:
1) How often does your website require platform work instead of business work?
If significant energy goes into maintenance, troubleshooting, compatibility, or tuning, the platform is consuming value instead of producing it.
2) Can your marketing department publish confidently without fear?
If publishing requires workarounds, re-checking formatting, or waiting on a specialist because something might break, your website is not serving the business.
3) Are performance and security structural, or are they maintained through constant effort?
If “good performance” depends on a chain of optimizations and special configurations, that’s fragile by default.
4) Are you building an asset, or operating a machine?
Websites should feel like assets: predictable, stable, easy to improve. If your site feels like a machine that requires continuous care to keep running, the foundation may be wrong.
A calmer path forward
This is not an argument that WordPress has no place. It’s an argument that many businesses have outgrown what WordPress asks of them.
If WordPress is still working for your organization, keep it—but set expectations honestly:
- Budget for ongoing maintenance.
- Use disciplined governance around plugins and themes.
- Treat updates as a real operational responsibility.
- Put guardrails around editing and publishing.
If you’re tired of the noise, the uncertainty, and the constant problem-solving, consider platforms designed for modern operating reality:
- Webflow when you want integrated design + CMS with fewer moving parts.
- Astro + a headless CMS (Storyblok or Contentful) when you want top-tier performance, structured content, and a cleaner separation between content operations and the website codebase.
- Shopify when commerce is primary and you want a managed product foundation.
Here's a New Year's resolution—spend less time talking about the platform—and more time building what your business actually needs.
