WordPress - A dinosaur waiting for the comet?

For many younger people, WordPress is a dinosaur of web development. But until today, this 22-year-old content management system has still been powering about 40% of all websites on the Internet. But with all the fancy frameworks like React and Svelte that can build beautiful web pages super-fast with AI support, do we still recommend WordPress to our clients?

Yes, and for many reasons: WordPress has an ecosystem like no other web-building environment. There is a plugin or a code snippet for everything. The user interface might be outdated, but at its core, WordPress isn't a design tool; it's a content management system. If used with a modern page builder like Bricks, which produces very clean HTML and CSS, WordPress can generate lean, attractive web pages. Compared with AI-generated JavaScript-heavy landing pages, these websites are maintainable and scalable. Clients can update their content in a simple editor while the web designer maintains the design.

And there are up-and-coming projects like Etch, a web development environment for WordPress that focuses on HTML & CSS (which could be great for AI support), and Rightplace, which allows users to maintain content and update their WordPress pages via a slick, locally installed app.

So WordPress is a survivor for a reason. Self-hosted, open-source, and incredibly flexible.