This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Itamar Tati
WordPress powers over 40% of the web, making it one of the most widely used content management systems (CMS) in existence. Yet, among software engineers—especially those who specialize in backend development and scalable web applications—WordPress has a reputation for being inefficient, bloated, and frustrating to work with.
I hate WordPress. I’ve spent countless hours dealing with messy codebases, troubleshooting plugin conflicts, and optimizing slow sites. But here’s the thing: WordPress is still great and necessary because customers want it. No matter how much I dislike working with it, businesses and clients continue to demand WordPress solutions, and for good reason.
1. Why Engineers Hate WordPress
Spaghetti Code and Legacy Baggage
WordPress started in 2003 as a simple blogging platform and evolved into a full-fledged CMS. Unfortunately, its core codebase carries a lot of legacy design choices, leading to:
- Global functions and variables: Instead of modern encapsulation, WordPress relies on global functions, making it easy to introduce conflicts.
- Mixing PHP, HTML, and Business Logic: Many themes and plugins contain PHP logic mixed directly into templates, violating software design best practices.
- Backwards Compatibility at All Costs: WordPress prioritizes compatibility with old plugins and themes, often at the expense of performance, security, and maintainability.
The Plugin Hell
Plugins are a double-edged sword: they make WordPress flexible, but they also create major headaches:
- Bloated and Inefficient Plugins: Many plugins load unnecessary scripts, slowing down websites.
- Security Risks: Poorly maintained plugins are one of the leading causes of WordPress hacks.
- Compatibility Nightmares: Plugins frequently conflict with each other, leading to endless debugging.
Performance Issues
WordPress is not built with performance in mind:
- Heavy Database Queries: WordPress stores everything in a MySQL database, which leads to inefficiencies as a site scales.
- Bloated Themes: Many themes include unnecessary CSS and JavaScript, hurting page speed.
- Scaling Challenges: High-traffic sites require extensive optimization (e.g., caching, CDNs) to perform well.
Customization is a Pain
For non-developers, WordPress is easy to customize. But for engineers, it’s frustrating:
- Modifying Core Behavior Requires Workarounds: Hooks and filters feel more like hacks than clean abstractions.
- Gutenberg Editor Conflicts: The React-based block editor adds complexity.
- Lack of a Modern Development Workflow: Unlike frameworks like Next.js or Spring Boot, WordPress lacks standardized build processes, dependency management, and testable architecture.
Security Nightmares
WordPress is a frequent hacking target:
- Frequent Vulnerabilities in Plugins and Themes
- Brute Force Attacks on Login Pages
- Lack of Default Security Best Practices
2. Why WordPress Is Still Great and Necessary
Despite all these flaws, WordPress remains the best option for many businesses and non-technical users. Here’s why:
1. Clients Love It
Most clients don’t care about clean code, scalable architecture, or software best practices. They just want a site that looks good, works well, and is easy to manage. WordPress delivers on this.
2. Rapid Development and Low Cost
For businesses that don’t have the budget for a custom-built application, WordPress provides a cheap and effective solution. They can get an e-commerce store, a blog, or a portfolio site up and running within hours.
3. Huge Ecosystem and Community Support
With thousands of themes and plugins available, WordPress allows businesses to add functionality without hiring developers. And if something goes wrong, there are countless tutorials and forums for support.
4. SEO and Marketing Advantages
WordPress has excellent SEO plugins (like Yoast) and marketing integrations, making it easy for businesses to optimize their sites for search engines without needing technical expertise.
5. It’s Familiar and User-Friendly
Many business owners and content managers already know how to use WordPress. Switching to a custom-built CMS or headless system often requires retraining, which they don’t want.
3. Better Alternatives Exist—But Clients Don’t Care
For engineers building modern web applications, there are far better alternatives:
- For Static Sites: Next.js, Astro, or Hugo offer faster and more secure solutions.
- For Custom Web Apps: Django, FastAPI, and Spring Boot provide scalable, maintainable backends.
- For Headless CMS Needs: Strapi, Sanity, and Contentful provide structured content management without WordPress bloat.
But at the end of the day, most clients don’t want to hear about better alternatives—they just want a WordPress site that works.
Conclusion
I hate WordPress. Many software engineers hate WordPress. But it’s still one of the most widely used and necessary tools in web development because it gives non-technical users exactly what they need: a simple, flexible, and cost-effective solution.
As engineers, we can complain about WordPress all we want, but as long as businesses keep demanding it, we’ll continue to work with it—whether we like it or not.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Itamar Tati
Itamar Tati | Sciencx (2025-02-16T19:06:47+00:00) Why I Hate WordPress—But Why It’s Still Great and Necessary. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/02/16/why-i-hate-wordpress-but-why-its-still-great-and-necessary/
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