Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Direction WordPress (GPL) Has Taken is an Embarrassment

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Mar 02, 2024

Lifeguard chair at Eastons Beach in Newport, RI

GPL? Yes. But it comes with strings attached. It'll be hard to save from bloat, which begets security entanglements too.

TWENTY years ago I was involved in the WordPress community. I was one of the early adopters. A decade ago I said I'd move away from it, having already maintained more than a dozen sites built with WordPress.

Last year we finally quit WordPress. To those who use WordPress.com, you have my condolences. In additional to the JavaScript bloat which WordPress(.org) mandates with deprecation of the "old" releases (WordPress 3.9.x is no longer receiving security releases/patches) you also have your data (and your visitors' data) sold to "Hey Hi" companies - whatever that even means.

I was one of the first users of WordPress.com. I was beta-testing it for Matt (who would form AutoMattic, a company named after him).

Blunder after blunder, scandal after scandal (the UI/UX person quit over the decision to adopt the current bloatware) we end up with a much bigger uproar and this one is about privacy. Just like with Reddit. But the issue, to me, started more than a decade ago.

There are many compelling reasons to convert your WordPress site (or 'your' WordPress.com site) to static pages. The reasons are a lot more compelling than "privacy" or "Hey Hi".

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