What Happened to WordPress?

I consider myself a WordPress expert, or at least as close as one can come to that title

For the past 20 years, I've been working with WP, contributing code, building websites, plugins, themes, managing hosting, and helping businesses understand the platform. I've seen it evolve from a simple blogging tool into a complex ecosystem that's fundamentally broken.

WordPress used to be beautiful. Simple. A blogging platform that democratized publishing. Anyone could download it, install it, and start writing.

That was 2003. This is 2026. What happened in between is a masterclass in how corporations capture open-source projects and turn them into lock-in machines.

The Original Dream

Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little created WordPress with a simple vision: "Make the web a better place."

Back then, WordPress was:

• Small: Under 100KB download
• Fast: Blazing quick on basic hosting
• Simple: For blogging, period
• Yours: Download, install, own it

The community was real developers scratching their own itch. Forums were helpful. Plugins solved specific problems.

It was the open web at its finest.

When Money Arrived

WordPress.com launched in 2005. Automattic raised venture capital. Suddenly, there were investors to please and growth targets to hit.

The narrative shifted from "software freedom" to "democratizing publishing." Subtle, but crucial.

Software freedom means you control your tools. Democratizing publishing means we'll give everyone access... to our platform.

The Corporate Community

By 2010, something strange happened. The WordPress "community" started looking like a corporate conference circuit:

• WordCamps became vendor showcases
• Speakers were selling services, not sharing knowledge
• Plugins went from solving problems to creating dependencies
• Themes became subscription traps

The old community—developers building for themselves, got priced out. Replaced by agencies selling $50,000 WordPress sites and SaaS companies pushing monthly subscriptions.

The Architecture of Lock-in

Modern WordPress isn't designed for user freedom. It's designed for vendor capture:

Plugin Dependency Hell

Try building a modern WordPress site without premium plugins. You can't. The core deliberately lacks features that vendors can monetize.

• Page builders: Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi
• SEO: Yoast, RankMath
• Security: Wordfence, Sucuri
• Backups: UpdraftPlus, BackWPup
• Performance: WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache

Each one creates vendor lock-in. Stop paying, lose functionality. Migrate elsewhere? Good luck exporting your Elementor designs.

The Gutenberg Trap

Gutenberg wasn't about improving editing. It was about data capture. Every block you create is WordPress-specific markup that doesn't exist anywhere else.

Want to move your content? You'll lose all formatting, layouts, and custom elements. Your content is hostage.

Hosting Vendor Lock-in

WP Engine, SiteGround, Kinsta, One.com and others don't just host WordPress—they modify it. Proprietary caching, staging systems, and management tools that only work on their platform.

Leave their hosting? Rebuild your deployment pipeline from scratch.

The Community Masquerade

The beautiful lie is calling this a "community." Real communities are organic. This is astroturfing at scale:

Fake Grassroots

• WordCamps sponsored by companies selling lock-in
• Meetups that are product demos
• Contributor Days that benefit corporate sponsors
• Core contributions steered by Automattic employees

The Influencer Economy

WordPress "influencers" aren't users sharing tips. They're affiliates pushing paid products. Every blog post, YouTube video, and conference talk is monetized.

The advice isn't "here's how to solve your problem." It's "here's what to buy with my affiliate link."

The Numbers Don't Lie

WordPress powers 43% of the web. But look deeper:

• Average site: 30+ plugins installed
• Page load time: 2.5+ seconds (mobile)
• Security vulnerabilities: 90% from plugins
• Maintenance costs: $500-2000/year minimum
• Vendor dependencies: Impossible to escape

This isn't democratizing publishing. This is creating digital sharecroppers.

The Customer Awakening

Smart businesses are noticing:

"We pay $300/month for WordPress extended hosting, $50/month for a page builder, $30/month for SEO tools, $40/month for backups, plus developer maintenance. For a blog."

"Our WordPress site is so slow we're losing customers. But migrating means rebuilding everything from scratch."

"Using WooCommerce for our site has degraded into 5 seconds load times for basic product pages. How does a plugin need 4x the allocated memory of any other stuff on our site, and caching?"

"We got hacked through a plugin vulnerability. Third time this year. I'm done."

The lock-in is breaking down because the value proposition collapsed.

What We Lost

The original WordPress vision wasn't wrong. It was beautiful:

• Own your content → Now it's trapped in proprietary formats
• Choose your hosting → Now you need vendor-specific infrastructure
• Customize freely → Now you need subscriptions to premium tools
• Simple and fast → Now it's bloated and slow

We traded ownership for convenience. Then the convenience disappeared, but the lock-in remained.

The Corporate Defense

When confronted, WordPress defenders use the same playbook:

"It's still open source!"
Technically true. But try using core WordPress without commercial plugins and hosting. You can't build anything modern.

"The community builds everything!"
The "community" is overwhelmingly commercial vendors extracting rent.

"You can always switch!"
To what? After years of Gutenberg blocks, premium themes, and plugin dependencies, migration costs more, even than staying trapped.

"It's democratizing!"
Democratizing what? The ability to pay monthly subscriptions to multiple vendors?

Why This Matters

WordPress's capture isn't unique. It's the playbook:

1. Create open-source project with real value
2. Build genuine community of users and contributors
3. Raise venture capital with "democratizing" narratives
4. Fragment core functionality into vendorizable pieces
5. Monetize the ecosystem while calling it "community"
6. Lock users in with platform-specific formats and dependencies

Drupal followed this path. So did Magento. React and Next.js are heading there now.

The pattern is: Open source for user acquisition, lock-in for revenue extraction.

The Way Forward

Real alternatives exist. They just don't have million-dollar marketing budgets:

Static Site Generators

Hugo, Jekyll, Gatsby for content that doesn't need databases. Your content stays in markdown. No vendor lock-in. Blazing fast.

Modern CMSs

Strapi, Payload, Ghost for dynamic content. Built for modern web standards. No plugin dependency hell.

Build Your Own

FastAPI + Svelte, Node + React, or whatever you prefer. Full control. No subscriptions. Actually fast.

What We're Building

At Idunworks, we're building tools that return ownership to users:

• Your content in standard formats you can take anywhere
• Your hosting on infrastructure you control
• Your tools without subscription dependencies
• Your speed without plugin bloat

Not because we hate WordPress. Because we remember what it used to represent.

If you are not happy with our services, we will do our best to improve them. As it should be.

The open web isn't dead. It just went underground while the corporations threw their "community" party.

We're bringing it back.