The WordPress Misfit

For over two decades, WordPress has been a driving force behind the evolution of the internet. What started in 2003 as a simple blogging platform quickly transformed into the world’s most widely used content management system (CMS), reshaping the web in the process.

WordPress has an open-source foundation and modular approach which allowed it to evolve rapidly, enabling anyone to build, customise, and scale a website with minimal technical knowledge. The platform’s extensive library of themes and plugins also made it possible to launch polished and functional websites quickly. As a result, it became the go-to solution for small businesses, freelancers, non-profits, content creators, and anyone else seeking a quick, affordable, and user-friendly solution.

This accessibility sparked a revolution in web design, and today, WordPress powers more than 40% of websites globally—43.5% to be precise (as of April 2025, W3Techs).

The Origins of WordPress

WordPress was created by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little in 2003 as a fork of another blogging platform, b2/cafelog. The goal was to make a platform that was user-friendly, customisable, and free. Initially, the focus was simply to create an easier-to-use blogging tool, and it didn’t have grand ambitions beyond that. WordPress was open source from the start, which meant that anyone could freely access the source code, improve upon it, and share their changes with the community.

Why Open Source?

The open-source model was a way to allow anyone to contribute to the software’s development. In the early 2000s, open-source software was seen as a way to democratise access to technology—allowing independent developers to improve the platform, add features, and fix bugs. This would foster innovation and allow the software to improve over time through community contributions. In a 2009 interview, Mullenweg mentioned that the open-source nature of WordPress was important to him personally because of how much he himself has benefited open-source software.

The open-source community around WordPress quickly grew, and contributors added more functionality, including themes and plugins.

The Focus on Blogging and Publishing

In those early years, WordPress was focused on helping people publish content online, particularly in the form of blogs. The features were built around that need: post creation, categorisation, commenting, and basic customisation. The modular nature of WordPress—made possible through plugins—allowed users to add functionality beyond blogging, but the primary focus remained on content management.

The Unintended Expansion of WordPress

As the open-source project gained traction, developers started creating plugins to extend WordPress’s functionality, turning it into something much more flexible than a blogging platform. This led to the rise of online stores, forums, portfolios, and corporate websites being built on WordPress. However, the platform was not originally designed with this broad scope in mind.

Mullenweg and Little’s aim was simply to make blogging easier, and WordPress’s original codebase was lean and simple to reflect this goal. As more people began to use WordPress for various purposes, the codebase had to evolve, but the platform was not built from the ground up to handle these diverse use cases.

In several interviews, Matt Mullenweg has acknowledged that WordPress has grown in ways they didn’t initially anticipate. In an interview with Wired in 2015, Mullenweg noted that they “never expected WordPress to become as big as it has”. He also mentioned that WordPress was intended to be a tool for “content creators” rather than a full-fledged CMS that could support enterprise solutions. Over time, though, it has evolved into something much more complex, and that has led to some of the challenges and criticisms it faces today.

The Industry’s Over-Reliance on WordPress

As WordPress has evolved from a simple blogging platform into a flexible content management system, it has become the default choice for many web agencies—often without considering the unique needs of the businesses they serve. This expansion of WordPress’ use was never part of its original vision, yet it’s become a widespread industry practice to apply it as a one-size-fits-all solution for a range of clients, from small startups to large enterprises.

While WordPress offers convenience with its modular plugins and themes, this approach can result in websites that feel more like templates than truly bespoke digital experiences. Businesses often end up with sites that are structurally similar to thousands of others, diluted in design and functionality, and risk losing the distinctiveness that many companies need to stand out in a crowded digital space.

Even more concerning, this widespread reliance on WordPress introduces a lack of control. Agencies and businesses can find themselves at the mercy of WordPress updates, plugin compatibility issues, or shifts in the platform’s direction—decisions they didn’t make, but which affect their online presence. This reliance can create significant challenges in terms of security vulnerabilities, brand consistency, and the flexibility to meet evolving business needs.

The problem is not WordPress itself, but how its convenience has overshadowed a deeper, more thoughtful approach to web development. The result? A digital landscape where too many businesses are built on a foundation that wasn’t designed for their needs in the first place.

Honouring the Legacy, Looking to the Future

WordPress has earned its place in web history. It opened doors, built communities, and helped millions bring their ideas online.

But it’s worth asking: is this tool truly serving us?

Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s the right fit for you. Following what everyone else is doing can seem safe, but in reality is far from it when it’s built on foundations you don’t fully control. In tech, where things evolve rapidly, this kind of conformity can quietly lead to instability.

As legendary investor and business thinker Warren Buffett once said: “The five most dangerous words in business are: ‘Everybody else is doing it.’” His point? Making decisions based on the crowd, rather than your unique goals and circumstances, can be costly in the long run.

Now may be the time to consider alternatives—not because WordPress has failed, but because it has been pushed beyond its original design, attempting to serve needs it was never intended to fulfil.

For businesses ready to move past the limitations of WordPress, Stratford Web Design can help you explore more adaptable, sustainable options.