Is WordPress dead?” In a fantastic WordPress group that I’m part of called The Admin Bar, a fellow WordPress developer recently said that he thought it wasn’t, but that a lot of sites might not need it. I’ve been thinking about what he said in terms of language.
Pilots and air traffic controllers all over the world speak English to each other. Not because it’s the best language, but because everyone has agreed on it, and that agreement is what makes the whole system work. A pilot landing in Frankfurt doesn’t need to speak German.
WordPress is a bit like that for websites
His test was simple: will the client ever need to log in to add content or make changes? If yes, you need a CMS, and WordPress is still a decent choice. If not, why build on WordPress at all?
It’s a fair test, and he’s right. If a site is five pages that will never change, there may be no need for a CMS, but I think there’s a second question that matters more for most of the people I work with.
What a common language gets you
Most of my clients find technology challenging. They’re not silly, they’re busy running a business, and when something goes wrong, they don’t want to learn a new system. They just want an answer.
With WordPress and the major page builders, that answer exists, because so many people use them. You can google “how do I change the footer in Elementor” and find a dozen tutorials. There are support forums, YouTube channels and groups full of people who’ve had the same problem. And I’d guess AI tools are good at WordPress, Elementor and Divi precisely because so much has been written about them over so many years. A business owner who’s stuck at 9pm can ask a chatbot and get a usable answer.
A site built from a prompt, as a one-off, has none of that. Nobody has written a tutorial for it, there’s no forum thread, and the tool that built it might have changed, or disappeared, by the time you need help.
A person, not a chatbot
Some people buy insurance direct from the insurer, but plenty still use a broker or a financial adviser because they want a person who knows their situation and will pick up the phone.
Websites are the same. A common language means you can have a developer set the site up so you can add content yourself, and that developer is still there to ask when something goes wrong. For a lot of business owners, that’s the whole point.
Is the grass greener?
WordPress has its problems right now. Plugins, speed, security, the pile of code he mentioned, and an AI-shaped storm that nobody can fully see the end of. When things are rocky, it’s tempting to look over the fence.
Some sites do belong over there, but as the old saying goes, it’s not always greener on the other side. New technology has its own problems, they just haven’t been discovered yet, and there are fewer people around to ask when you find them.
WordPress’s problems are well known and well documented, and there’s a large ecosystem of people with a vested interest in finding a way through. I can’t promise they will, and that’s a hope rather than a prediction, but I’d rather be on the side of the fence where there’s someone to ask.