When I started Projekt19, we went all-in with WordPress. The tool was still new but had exploded with functionality. The community grew and extended the platform with game-changing plugins like WooCommerce, All-in-one-SEO, and tons of amazing themes.
WordPress was a great blogging platform. It then became the defacto CMS small businesses tool.
I’ve built close to 50 WordPress sites including popular blogs, small business sites, and portfolios.
As with most things popularity can derail intentions. With the rise of WP, the community exploded with hundreds of marketplaces to sell plugins and themes. If you visit any of those marketplaces now you will still see thousands of themes and plugins. The problem was that WordPress was trying to do everything. WP became a blog, a portfolio, a knowledge base, and a directory within a single theme. Themes become bloated with many features that a single theme could support over 100 different versions of itself.
WP started feeling heavy, the implementation of a theme wasn’t a plug-and-play project. The sites often felt sluggish with these massive theme files. I’m not even mentioning the “fix everything with a plugin” model! I remembered hearing on average WordPress sites have over 15 plugins installed at any given time! 🤦
For all these reasons above, WordPress was unbundled! Today, no-code tools support businesses, Shopify for e-commerce, and Ghost for simple blogging.
WordPress doesn’t get talked about too much these days, most of the craze is around the no-code wave! I'm surprised to hear that WordPress is not only kicking around, but it’s also dominating.
*According to W3Techs, WordPress powers 40% of all the websites on the Internet, including those without a content management system (CMS) or with a custom-coded CMS.
WordPress’ market share is 40% of all websites
It’s truly astonishing!
Shopify and no-code tools are having their 15 minutes of fame but WordPress is over here still crushing it. To be honest, I am not surprised! Here’s why!
1. No-code feels disjointed
Jumping into no-code, it’s been decent but the biggest problem is that it’s messy. No-code has unbundled WordPress! It’s not surprising, I mentioned it above, WordPress started doing everything and reminded us all the freshman 15.
WordPress created no-code! No-code is an unbundled version of WP
WordPress is still a great tool, yes it’s heavy but it’s under a single roof. no-code is light and nimble but a little disjointed. Can we collect no-code into a suite? Does that defeat the allure of no-code! Maybe?
It’s not all bad, there are some great no-code tools for great focused, quality purposes! I’ve created a few different projects using no-code and my tech stack looks like this
That’s only a quick example, each one comes at a price and I am visiting four different dashboards!
This isn’t far from the idea of WordPress plugins, but the WP experience is so much more streamlined.
2. Shopify and Ghost niche down
Shopify has seen great success focusing on small business e-commerce! eBay dominated the market for a long time. The rise of online commerce created a market for a small niche player to come in. WooCommerce tried to do this within the WordPress platform and has been successful. That said, Shopify is the clear winner - niche down and win!
Ghost is similar though a little younger! They haven’t hit the growth that Shopify has but the trajectory shows that it could. Ghost is a writing tool for bloggers, nothing else. It doesn’t have flashy sidebars, carousels, or video backgrounds. It’s a beautiful experience for reading and writing! They took what was the original purpose of WP and focused on that.
Now getting back to why I am not surprised that WordPress is so popular. It's as simple as there are fewer people that need a niche platform. Most people what to do all the things!
Whats' the point of this post?
It’s good to be aware of the new kids on the block! Don’t be so quick to turn your back on the sturdy house at the end of the street. It might not be flashy on the outside but it might stand the test of time!
WordPress stat reference: *https://kinsta.com/wordpress-market-share/