What's worse than WordPress? WordPress + WooCommerce! What's worse than WordPress + WooCommerce? WordPress + WooCommerce + PayPal! What other more shitty software could we possibly add? Some malicious virus hidden somewhere in the millions of free WordPress plugins most of which are not even full open-source? Who can possibly review and maintain that rummage table of outdated crap code?

Is 'wordpress' development? I thought it was a content gui with some config scripts and maybe some custom pages

@MammaNeedHummus lotta people are just freelance "WordPress developers". Whole class of people. Approach companies, build them a WordPress store, and then charge like 50$ a month for hosting. You get like 50 of these you just coast

@jestdotty Given that WordPress sites get hacked left and right if left unattended, there is actually value if it's not just the hosting, but also the updates. If the same developer takes care of several sites, I can see how the efficiency would scale.

@jestdotty The tech core of WP is just atrocious and gets worse with every new addition. Like, the Gutenberg editor formatting stuff is stored as fucking HTML comments in the database.

However, it does offer the features that people want, as ugly as it is, which is why it powers a frightening 43% of websites: https://w3techs.com/technologies/...

The bloat both in hosting and delivery didn't deter anyone, so I guess our only hope is cybercrime. The whole way of overcomplex shit with way too many dependencies isn't sustainable anymore in terms of security.

A lot of the jobs I see around here still look for some WordPress experience, possibly some Shopify thrown in there too.

What's the industry preference nowadays? Is my small corner of the world lagging behind everyone else's bespoke, in-house builds?

@DamoMac See here: https://w3techs.com/technologies/...

WP has remained flat at around 43% of all websites over the last two years. Shopify as nearest contender has made small inroads, stagnating at about only 4%.

No known CMS is behind about 32%, that might be bespoken solutions, also flatlining over the past two years.

There is no trend change to see.

@Fast-Nop Thank you!

Really surprised at some of those numbers. Reassuring to know that I'm not about to lose my job because everyone jumped over to Wix and Squarespace though.

@DamoMac Wix and Squarespace are for people who wouldn't hire a web dev anyway.

One big con is that both rely on their proprietary platform to lock people in - it's difficult to migrate away without basically rebuilding the site.

Not only that this is a price hike in the making, it's also tying one's website investment to the fate of these companies, which isn't a smart move for any non-trivial website.

Low-code tools like Squarespace, WordPress, WooCommerce just work but only until the site owners want to do anything beneath the most obvious happy path, then they call a dev for help and maintenance to fix the mess - expecting to do this for very low hourly rates because WP development is supposed to be cheap and not real development.

We should bill them 1000,- $ per hour and make them suffer!

@usr--2ndry Yesn't. There is a perfectly valid use case for self-made stuff like with Squarespace, and that's startups, especially the brick-and-mortar kind.

It makes absolutely no sense to waste money on an expensive website early on. The cheapest useful brochure style website is enough: what does the business offer, where is it, what are the business hours, contact info, some pictures, maybe pricing.

The saved money should better go to other business investments. Or just be put aside to have more reserves, or to still have it if the business fails.

WP is rotten to the core, but what it does offer is that clients can add content themselves without needing much expertise. They don't want to use markdown, and any SSG workflow that starts with local git and/or npm is totally off the table anyway.

@Fast-Nop they get a problem when the start to outgrow the initial MVP brochure stage but have not entered the enough time, money, and priority to do it properly-stage.

@usr--2ndry Yeah, but the solution isn't to make a proper, but expensive website at the start because at that point, they have even less money relative to other necessary investments. The ROI of an expensive website at that phase is just bad.

I googled the supposed advantages of WooCommerce: from a Shopify perspective, Woo is "for techies",

pros: configurability, cons: maintenance;

but from a developer perspective, Woo development is not real development. Conclusion: always refuse any customer project assignment that has anything to do with WooCommerce!