WordPress Showcasing the Hidden Sunset of Web and Digital  Full Document Contents/Articles/WordPress Showcasing the Hidden Sunset of Web and Digital.md, WordPress Showcasing the Hidden Sunset of Web and Digital, Mario. > [!note]+ Document Notes > tags: > - #WordPress > - #digital-transformation > - #web-development > - #open-source > - #technology > Author: Mario Peshev > Source: Mario Peshev's Blog > Reference: [Link to article](https://mariopeshev.com/musings/wordpress-showcasing-the-hidden-sunset-of-web-and-digital/) > date created: 2025-01-14 10:00 > > # Title: WordPress: Showcasing the Hidden Sunset of Web and Digital > <!-- deep-read:sections start --> ## Table of Contents: - [📝 Summary](#summary) - [📖 Main Content](#main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#notes) - [📖 References](#references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#methodology) - [❓ Questions](#questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#future-research) - [💡 Implications](#implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#logical-validity) - [🔍 DARVO Analysis](#darvo-analysis) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#conclusion) ### References: - Mario Peshev's Blog: [Link to article](https://mariopeshev.com/musings/wordpress-showcasing-the-hidden-sunset-of-web-and-digital/) ## 📝 Summary: In this article, Mario Peshev explores WordPress's evolving role in the digital landscape, positioning it as a key player in the "hidden sunset" of traditional web development. He reflects on the shifting trends in digital technology, the implications of these changes for web developers, and how WordPress is adapting to new challenges in the web and digital space. The article offers a thought-provoking take on WordPress’s future and its place in an increasingly fragmented digital ecosystem. ## 📖 Main Content: Peshev discusses the slow yet inevitable decline of older technologies as the web shifts to new paradigms. He argues that traditional CMS platforms like WordPress are facing unique challenges as the web moves toward decentralized, more flexible technologies. However, he emphasizes that WordPress still holds an important place due to its vast community, flexibility, and ongoing innovation. The article touches on: - The evolution of the web towards decentralization and cloud-based solutions - WordPress’s ability to adapt through continuous updates and a strong developer community - The importance of innovation to remain relevant in the changing digital space - WordPress's future role in a world of fast-paced digital transformation ### 🗒️ Notes: - **Web Evolution**: WordPress is facing challenges due to a shift from traditional CMS to more flexible digital platforms. - **Decentralization**: The digital space is evolving toward decentralized and cloud-based systems, posing new challenges. - **Adaptability**: WordPress continues to innovate, adapting to these changes with its open-source nature and large community. - **Future Prospects**: Despite these challenges, WordPress still holds a crucial role due to its scalability and flexibility. - **Developer Community**: The power of WordPress lies in its thriving developer community and constant updates. ## 📖 References: - Mario Peshev's Blog: [Link to article](https://mariopeshev.com/musings/wordpress-showcasing-the-hidden-sunset-of-web-and-digital/) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1. **Original**: "The shift from traditional web models to decentralized, cloud-based solutions signals a sunset for old digital paradigms." **Paraphrase**: "The transition from classic web systems to decentralized and cloud-driven solutions marks the decline of traditional digital frameworks." 2. **Original**: "Despite these challenges, WordPress remains an essential tool due to its flexibility and the strength of its developer community." **Paraphrase**: "Even with these challenges, WordPress continues to be indispensable because of its adaptability and the robust community behind it." ## 📰 Newsletter: In this issue, we delve into a compelling analysis by Mario Peshev on the future of WordPress in the changing digital world. As the web shifts toward decentralized systems and cloud-based solutions, WordPress is presented with new challenges. However, its flexibility, innovation, and the strength of its community position it to remain an essential tool in the digital ecosystem. Read more about how WordPress is evolving to meet the demands of the future. [Link to full article] ## ✅ Action Items: 1. **Review Current Trends**: Examine how other CMS platforms are responding to the digital shift and compare their strategies with WordPress. 2. **Engage the WordPress Community**: Start a discussion on how WordPress can further adapt to the changing digital landscape. 3. **Stay Updated**: Monitor ongoing updates to WordPress and other platforms to stay informed about emerging trends in web development. ## 🧪 Hypotheses: 1. **Hypothesis 1**: As decentralization increases, CMS platforms that prioritize flexibility and scalability, like WordPress, will continue to thrive. 2. **Hypothesis 2**: WordPress will become even more integrated with cloud technologies to maintain its competitive edge in the web development space. ### 📊 Methodology: - **Data Sources**: Gather insights from WordPress community forums, blog discussions, and tech reports on web development trends. - **Research Design**: Conduct surveys or focus groups with web developers to understand how they view WordPress's role in the evolving web ecosystem. - **Analysis Techniques**: Use qualitative analysis to assess the attitudes towards WordPress’s future and its adaptability to new technologies. ## ❓ Questions: 1. How can WordPress further embrace emerging web technologies like AI and blockchain to remain competitive? 2. What are the key challenges that WordPress faces in adapting to decentralized systems, and how can they be addressed? ## 🔮 Future Research: - **Decentralized Web**: Investigate how decentralized technologies like blockchain will shape the future of CMS platforms like WordPress. - **AI Integration**: Explore how AI can be integrated into WordPress to improve content creation, site management, and personalization. ## 💡 Implications: - **Adaptability and Relevance**: The continued success of WordPress hinges on its ability to adapt to the changing digital ecosystem, especially with the rise of decentralized technologies. - **Community-driven Development**: The strength of WordPress’s community plays a crucial role in its ongoing evolution and capacity to stay relevant. ## 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: - **Visual Learners**: The article could be enhanced by adding diagrams or flowcharts to illustrate the evolving web ecosystem and WordPress's position within it. - **Aural Learners**: Providing an audio version or podcast discussion could help auditory learners better grasp the complex concepts presented. - **Verbal Learners**: The article is rich in content, with detailed descriptions and examples, which aligns well with verbal learners. - **Kinesthetic Learners**: Including actionable tasks, like a workshop on adapting WordPress to new technologies, could engage kinesthetic learners. - **Logical Learners**: The article could include more structured arguments and breakdowns of technological shifts to appeal to logical learners. ## 📊 Accessibility Assessment: - **Screen Reader Compatibility**: Ensure the article’s layout is optimized for screen readers, and all images have appropriate alt text. - **Keyboard Navigation**: Make sure the article and its embedded links are fully accessible via keyboard navigation. - **Text Resizing**: Ensure that the article text is responsive to different screen sizes and can be resized without disrupting the layout. ## 🌍 DEIB Assessment: - **Cultural Relevance**: The article focuses on digital technologies but could benefit from discussing how these changes affect different global communities. - **Inclusive Language**: The language used is neutral, but could be more inclusive in terms of gender and socio-economic factors. - **Neurodiversity Support**: Breaking up large paragraphs and using more varied sentence structures could improve accessibility for neurodiverse readers. ## ✅ Logical Validity: - **Sound Deductive Reasoning**: The article presents a solid argument that WordPress’s adaptability is crucial for its survival in the face of new digital paradigms. - **Logical Fallacies**: The article avoids fallacies and presents a clear, coherent argument. However, more specific examples of challenges WordPress faces would strengthen the argument. ## 🔍 DARVO Analysis: - **Deny**: No denial is present in the article. - **Attack**: The article does not attack any individuals or groups but focuses on the challenges and opportunities faced by WordPress. - **Reverse Victim and Offender**: There is no attempt to reverse the victim-offender roles in this context. ### 🔍 SEO Evaluation: - **Keywords**: The article uses relevant keywords such as "WordPress," "web development," "open-source," and "digital transformation," which are crucial for SEO. - **Meta Description**: The article could benefit from a more detailed meta description that incorporates target keywords and summarizes the content. - **Internal Links**: Including internal links to other articles related to WordPress innovations could improve the SEO. - **Mobile Optimization**: Ensure the article is fully responsive on mobile devices and that the page loads quickly on mobile platforms. ## 🎯 Conclusion: Mario Peshev’s article provides an insightful reflection on the challenges and opportunities WordPress faces in an evolving digital landscape. As the web shifts towards decentralization and cloud-based solutions, WordPress’s ability to adapt will determine its continued relevance. However, with a strong community and ongoing innovation, WordPress is well-positioned to thrive amidst these changes. <!-- deep-read:sections end --> ## Highlights - My last piece uncovered [the PMF model breaking](https://mariopeshev.com/musings/why-product-market-fit-breaks-paradigms-by-the-old-textbooks/) because we operate under a different reality. This is largely true. It’s a conversation I’ve been having behind closed doors and in small rooms with leaders, but not a popular opinion to share in the public. And one of the reasons for that is that public data is masked in a way that conveys trust and convinces people that everything is fine and under control. Like the old meme, remember? One great example of waning demand (also shaping job requirements or open roles) is **my ongoing involvement in the WordPress ecosystem, how it’s been shifting over the past few years, and the reality of what that represents as true example of the business ecosystem**. DevriX introduced marketing, business consulting, data engineering, GTM solutions in our stack over the past years, including our first HubSpot partnership signed in 2016 and other collaborations since. But ultimately, it started as a WordPress dev shop (later a retainer agency) and a good chunk of the agency revenue is still WordPress-based. While we still work with some incredible businesses – and some have been with us for 8 or 9 years now! – the demand for WordPress builds in 2015 was WAY HIGHER than anything in 2022-2024 (and the early insights of 2025 we see.) If you merely take a look at the [w3techs](https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management) stats of market penetration, WordPress is still the predominant CMS:  Nearly half the web runs on WordPress. Fun, right? As someone who spent 8 years studying computer science, I was taught that “if you punch the numbers long enough, they’ll tell you anything you want.” While the stats above may, in fact, be true (and I quote them often as general proof that WordPress is a market leader), we also need to analyze what that means. • Unlike Shopify, Wix, Webflow, etc, WordPress is free. Free always has larger market penetration than paid. Even cheap does better than expensive in terms of net users. • WordPress is a 21-year-old platform; some of the players in the list launched a decade ago, and some sooner. • WordPress has a unique feature called “Multisite” which enables you to virtually run the same instance on dozens, hundreds, or thousands of domains. DevriX has been involved in multisite networks – same codebase – with hundreds of thousands of sites running within the same database, with the same file system. It’s a very unique trait that, technically, represents different domains/sites/GA properties, but works differently than most others. • In WordPress’s defense, that’s kinda how most hosted SaaS work (Webflow, Shopify, Wix…) • Being free, the cost of launching dozens of sites is going down. Especially at scale, it makes a ton of sense. • This also means lack of censorship or control. Great if you want “freedom of speech”, bad if you want to avoid propaganda, adult sites, PBNs, link building farms, fake scrapers, phishing websites… Everything illegal that you can ever think of. • Many websites have been launched as an “experiment” and abandoned. Especially valid for those hosted on WordPress dot com and similar properties, hosted SaaS keeping hundreds of thousands, millions, or sometimes north of 10M sites because it’s cheap enough to hold inactive sites (no traffic = no heavy server use), but helps marketing and upselling other types of deals. In the grand scheme of things, everyone can opt in for a free dot com website. And many of the other networks in the chart above are growing with freemium plans, too – such as Wix. But we see Shopify, Squarespace, Webflow among the top 10 CMS in the list. None of them boasts a free plan. And growing steadily over time is a significant reminder that users do need stability, user experience, scale, even as it comes at a cost. And that cost isn’t that much higher than a self-hosted solution. In some cases, it’s cheaper if you don’t have a decent dev team or a devops team in place to manage scalability or security. The cost of launching is seamlessly lower with hosted SaaS. The selection of beautiful, fast, quality WordPress themes isn’t vast enough – and one can get in trouble if they pick the wrong demo cluttered with vulnerable JS sliders or builders. Most proper builds we’ve launched in the agency involved a bespoke theme – and we’ve built dozens of these for high scale clients coming over with performance or stability issues. Also, no need to think about maintenance, security updates, plugin vulnerabilities, hosting failover… I’m stating the obvious as a business professional with 25 years of tech experience (building my first website in 1999). Despite my passion and commitment to open source, hosted SaaS are growing and raising funds because they solve real problems for large TAM. There are over [1.5 billion websites online](https://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/) and a good chunk of them get redesigned, rebuilt, migrated, or merged every 3-5 years. As a business model, the cohort of CMS and site builders competing for attention is serving a massive space. Competition is fierce for a good reason. And as I’ve been running my blog on WordPress since 2008, I represent the statistical percentage of WordPress users, but not without my complaints on back-end load times, components I have to extract, different block bundles that aren’t high quality, or basic features like scheduling lacking basic components like a date picker:  Or simply repetitive components when you need an element from a bundle that redefines a core component:  Yet again, open source retains all the data ownership and trust into website owners (and the businesses on top). • You own your data source • Full level of privacy • Compliance with GDPR, CCPA etc • No fear of getting banned or blocked • Complete control over the full stack (no scripts lurking in tracking data or collecting insights) I’ve met dozens of founders whose websites got banned or blocked or stopped or blacklisted on proprietary platforms because of triggering some flags. It’s particularly painful for e-commerce stores randomly blocked because of “possibly fraudulent activity” without incurring any of that. I’ve had my PayPal and Stripe accounts blocked for verification for weeks, too – because they follow the same hosted model ran by a single organization on top. Imagine running an open source gateway that never stops, even if you take the risks of card skimming or brute forcing the payment gateways. Ultimately, when I take a look at new sites around me developed over the past 2 years, these are often built with the site builders in the chart above, or stores running on Shopify, or proprietary builds on Craft, Brightspot, Adobe, and any number of corporate platforms. Or niche solutions for specific verticals. Or simple static sites/Node.js boilerplate builds/GitHub pages sites. WordPress isn’t powering 43% of the sites launched over the last two years. And it’s definitely not the actively maintained or growing sites over the past 2 years. Could be 20%, or a little lower. But relying on the public data isn’t portraying what businesses are picking today. And when it comes to open source, as an ecosystem, we used to compare WordPress with other CMS solutions like Joomla or Drupal or Presta Shop or OpenCart. While these are still valid platforms powering millions of sites, that’s not necessarily the open s ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jhn4te51tra40wabp58dgz3j)) - My last piece uncovered [the PMF model breaking](https://mariopeshev.com/musings/why-product-market-fit-breaks-paradigms-by-the-old-textbooks/) because we operate under a different reality. This is largely true. It’s a conversation I’ve been having behind closed doors and in small rooms with leaders, but not a popular opinion to share in the public. And one of the reasons for that is that public data is masked in a way that conveys trust and convinces people that everything is fine and under control. Like the old meme, remember? One great example of waning demand (also sha ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jhn4v5bqgwdx7hzg0snvawf1)) - ping job requirements or open roles) is **my ongoing involvement in the WordPress ecosystem, how it’s been shifting over the past few years, and the reality of what that represents as true example of the business ecosystem**. DevriX introduced marketing, business consulting, data engineering, GTM solutions in our stack over the past years, including our first HubSpot partnership signed in 2016 and other collaborations since. But ultimately, it started as a WordPress dev shop (later a retainer agency) and a good chunk of the agency revenue is still WordPress-based. While we still work with some incredible businesses – and some have been with us for 8 or 9 years now! – the demand for WordPress builds in 2015 was WAY HIGHER than anything in 2022-2024 (and the early insights of 2025 we see.) If you merely take a look at the [w3techs](https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management) stats of market penetration, WordPress is still the predominant CMS:  ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jhn4vbq6taqkzyxc84k7vxe1)) - Nearly half the web runs on WordPress. Fun, right? As someone who spent 8 years studying computer science, I was taught that “if you punch the numbers long enough, they’ll tell you anything you want.” While the stats above may, in fact, be true (and I quote them often as general proof that WordPress is a market leader), we also need to analyze what that means. • Unlike Shopify, Wix, Webflow, etc, WordPress is free. Free always has larger market penetration than paid. Even cheap does better than expensive in terms of net users. • WordPress is a 21-year-old platform; some of the players in the list launched a decade ago, and some sooner. • WordPress has a unique feature called “Multisite” which enables you to virtually run the same instance on dozens, hundreds, or thousands of domains. DevriX has been involved in multisite networks – same codebase – with hundreds of thousands of sites running within the same database, with the same file system. It’s a very unique trait that, technically, represents different domains/sites/GA properties, but works differently than most others. • In WordPress’s defense, that’s kinda how most hosted SaaS work (Webflow, Shopify, Wix…) • Being free, the cost of launching dozens of sites is going down. Especially at scale, it makes a ton of sense. • This also means lack of censorship or control. Great if you want “freedom of speech”, bad if you want to avoid propaganda, adult sites, PBNs, link building farms, fake scrapers, phishing websites… Everything illegal that you can ever think of. • Many websites have been launched as an “experiment” and abandoned. Especially valid for those hosted on WordPress dot com and similar properties, hosted SaaS keeping hundreds of thousands, millions, or sometimes north of 10M sites because it’s cheap enough to hold inactive sites (no traffic = no heavy server use), but helps marketing and upselling other types of deals. In the grand scheme of things, everyone can opt in for a free dot com website. And many of the other networks in the chart above are growing with freemium plans, too – such as Wix. But we see Shopify, Squarespace, Webflow among the top 10 CMS in the list. None of them boasts a free plan. And growing steadily over time is a significant reminder that users do need stability, user experience, scale, even as it comes at a cost. And that cost isn’t that much higher than a self-hosted solution. In some cases, it’s cheaper if you don’t have a decent dev team or a devops team in place to manage scalability or security. The cost of launching is seamlessly lower with hosted SaaS. The selection of beautiful, fast, quality WordPress themes isn’t vast enough – and one can get in trouble if they pick the wrong demo cluttered with vulnerable JS sliders or builders. Most proper builds we’ve launched in the agency involved a bespoke theme – and we’ve built dozens of these for high scale clients coming over with performance or stability issues. Also, no need to think about maintenance, security updates, plugin vulnerabilities, hosting failover… I’m stating the obvious as a business professional with 25 years of tech experience (building my first website in 1999). Despite my passion and commitment to open source, hosted SaaS are growing and raising funds because they solve real problems for large TAM. There are over [1.5 billion websites online](https://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/) and a good chunk of them get redesigned, rebuilt, migrated, or merged every 3-5 years. As a business model, the cohort of CMS and site builders competing for attention is serving a massive space. Competition is fierce for a good reason. And as I’ve been running my blog on WordPress since 2008, I represent the statistical percentage of WordPress users, but not without my complaints on back-end load times, components I have to extract, different block bundles that aren’t high quality, or basic features like scheduling lacking basic components like a date picker:  Or simply repetitive components when you need an element from a bundle that redefines a core component:  Yet again, open source retains all the data ownership and trust into website owners (and the businesses on top). • You own your data source • Full level of privacy • Compliance with GDPR, CCPA etc • No fear of getting banned or blocked • Complete control over the full stack (no scripts lurking in tracking data or collecting insights) I’ve met dozens of founders whose websites got banned or blocked or stopped or blacklisted on proprietary platforms because of triggering some flags. It’s particularly painful for e-commerce stores randomly blocked because of “possibly fraudulent activity” without incurring any of that. I’ve had my PayPal and Stripe accounts blocked for verification for weeks, too – because they follow the same hosted model ran by a single organization on top. Imagine running an open source gateway that never stops, even if you take the risks of card skimming or brute forcing the payment gateways. Ultimately, when I take a look at new sites around me developed over the past 2 years, these are often built with the site builders in the chart above, or stores running on Shopify, or proprietary builds on Craft, Brightspot, Adobe, and any number of corporate platforms. Or niche solutions for specific verticals. Or simple static sites/Node.js boilerplate builds/GitHub pages sites. WordPress isn’t powering 43% of the sites launched over the last two years. And it’s definitely not the actively maintained or growing sites over the past 2 years. Could be 20%, or a little lower. But relying on the public data isn’t portraying what businesses are picking today. And when it comes to open source, as an ecosystem, we used to compare WordPress with other CMS solutions like Joomla or Drupal or Presta Shop or OpenCart. While these are still valid platforms powering millions of sites, that’s not necessarily the open source alternative suite we’re seeing today. Existing Next.js frameworks have picked up. Static sites as well. Smaller or standalone FOSS content management systems like Ghost. Boilerplate sites. Laravel framework builds that take a couple of hours to launch. The suite of available solutions is expanding. The market is more fragmented and there’s limited tracking on new websites built or rebuilt annually. This would portray a different picture simply because we lack the data points to compare. Just as we measure websites – and WordPress websites in particular – we don’t pay attention to the growing user base of social networks, revenue generated on commerce marketplaces, and how people use chatbots or run search queries on X, or create monetization profiles and creator profiles the same way they ran Medium sites or traditional WordPress blogs before. Similarly to a “death by a thousand cuts”, each ecosystem makes a small pivot into something else, one platform at a time, one system at a time. As these add up over time, the market share is waning, and recovering all of that may be irreversible – or an effort requiring years to overcome and get back to the growth chart. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jhn4vmg8d5psttc28kvj4ge6)) - waning demand (also shaping job requirements or open roles) is **my ongoing involvement in the WordPress ecosystem, how it’s been shifting over the past few years, and the reality of what that represents as true example of the business ecosystem**. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jhvcpdebffbyxca4yn0nvb30))