I read this post on Reddit:
“I wanted to create a portfolio website to market my services, should I make it or not. I am a healthcare professional and can’t seem to understand what the WordPress war is about! Will it affect me if Invest money in building website. As I read previous post lot of people going away from WordPress. Kindly share your wisdom folks.”
This article is my opinion, based on my education, knowledge, available information, and experience – nothing more, nothing less (though I do hope I’m wrong about most stuff stated here).
For context, this is the WordPress drama overview:
One man owns the free wordpress.org and the paid-for hosting wordpress.com (using naked domains is far from his biggest problem) through his company Automattic. He advertised WordPress as free, open source, it has gained huge popularity over the past 20 years, and he’s now blackmailing a huge corporate-owned hosting provider, WP Engine, to pay him a ton of money each year – or else. WP Engine customers and ACF plugin (owned by WP Engine) users are caught in the crossfire.
Let me try to answer that.
There is nothing to worry about – no more than you should normally worry, at least. 🙂
This is two corporations fighting over money and power. Sure, one of the two seems a bit mentally unwell, but no more than your average CEO or president – just a bit more publicly. Things will get settled. If needed, the management of WordPress will be bought out or taken away in one way or another. There is too much money and people around WordPress to be let to just crash and burn.
It will get more expensive though, with more corporate control – just like everything else. It will also get more and more difficult for ordinary, non-corporate people to make, market and sell plugins and themes (while those existing will be pressured to sell to corporations).
So, to repeat, you will just be paying more. Paying with money if you stay with WordPress, or with your time (and needed expertise) if you switch to some other CMS.
No other CMS is nearly as user friendly and as well supported – if such a CMS emerges and gains popularity, it will very likely follow the path of WordPress pretty soon.
Shared hosting (as the kind of hosting that makes most sense for the small business and individual websites) is already getting more and more expensive. cPanel, the only more-less decent control panel, is doing wild price hikes year after year – since it was bough by a big investment fund. Alternatives are simply put – not production ready (and yes, I do also use DirectAdmin).
Yes, depending on how the current corporate battle ends, results will slightly differ in the short term, but in the long run, it will all be “good” (expensive, and corporate-controlled).
First and only in-page advert:
Thank you for your support and understanding.
It is also worth noting that websites in the classic sense are getting obsolete. Latest Google algorithm changes have made that painfully obvious (for those who didn’t already see it coming). For now, forums, corporate sites and webshops are getting a pass, but very soon, we’ll only have a few huge “social networks” (are they really social?), and a few huge mega-shops like Amazon. People will ask their phone/computer for the info, and the corporate-controlled “AI” will provide them with answers they are allowed to get.
So, no reason to panic. It won’t help. 🙂 There’s not really anything you can do about it. If you want or need to run a website, WordPress is probably still the best least bad choice for most use cases. Until searches, clicks, forums and websites follow the path of the BBS, Usenet, and the dinosaurs.
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