Seeking a WordPress alternative

I’ve been using WordPress as long as there’s been WordPress, with only a single excursion elsewhere. Twenty-three years.

When WordPress started, it was intended for bloggers. You could post words and pictures and links, and build a nice looking website. If you were mildly savvy, you could embed content from other places, like YouTube. Life was good.

And then, some things happened.

Third-party plug-ins was one of those things. A community of open source developers who understood the brief concocted an ever growing array of add-ins that extended the functionality and allowed for better formatting of content — and allowed for new types of content. Somewhere along that line, someone saw dollar signs.

Along with the plug-in explosion came increased theme functionality. Themes became more and more capable and more and more complex. They added their own plug-ins and design frameworks. Somewhere along that line, someone saw dollar signs.

Suddenly, if you’re not actively and aggressively trying to monetize your “blog,” you’re doing it wrong. And, if you dare to leave a negative review about a plug-in (with examples of why your review is negative), you’re ostracized or called out or punished. I remember when reviews were allowed to point out shortcomings of a product.

The short of this is, after using and pushing WordPress since its inception, I’ve had it. The platform has become bloated and fragile. The plug-in architecture hasn’t kept pace, and the community has soured and become toxic. And, I’ve grown tired of spending a lot of time fighting incompatibilities, poor code, poor support, and bad, holier-than-thou attitudes. TL;DR (as the kids say), I’m done.

At this point, I’m not necessarily looking to kill off gerenm.net entirely (or at all). But I am looking to reshape it in a more stable, more manageable form, likely even moving away from my long-time relationship with the good folks at ICDSoft and moving to a hosted platform.

If anyone is still reading at this point, I’d like to know your experiences with hosted platforms. A look around here will give you some insight into the features that I use. You can leave your suggestions in the comments section below.