Chapter 7b

"WordPress is a prison"

This is not a straw man. It was posted this week, with a name under it — and the replies were better than the charge.

• The charge: "free", until the invoices start. Security, builders, SEO, backups, caching, forms — each one a subscription, an update, and something that breaks at 11pm.
• The sharpest answer: whoever leads you out mostly leads you into a closed stack. "That isn't an escape; it's a new landlord."
• The second: if commerce, mail, login, payment and fulfilment all become separate services, then SaaS hell is no different from plugin hell. Just newer packaging.
• The third comes from the client's side: needing a developer for every changed sentence is also a prison. One without a key.
• And mine: the man writing it spent ten years as a WordPress developer. He did not abolish the prison — he moved, and now he decides which one you check into.

I am presenting this because the charge is true — of badly built sites. What it misses is chapter 2: the access is in core now.