March 25th, 2022 Posted in Web Design, Web Development, WooCommerce, WordPress

Why I’d love to see a developer version of WordPress

I design and build completely custom WordPress websites for small businesses. The standard WordPress install package comes with loads of stuff I don’t want, so I’d like to see a stripped back version of WordPress with no full site editing and no Gutenberg included for developer use.

UPDATE: I’m clearly not alone and ClassicPress is a potential option, especially if it updates to the v5.x codebase while removing Gutenberg. It’s a different approach to just disabling all the junk that comes with standard WP and how viable it is long term will depend on how many coders get involved how many sites actually use it. I’ve seen this happen before (Zen Cart) and the forked version died pretty quickly.

Gutenberg, ugh

I hate the Gutenberg page builder, and so do most of my clients. Judging by over 5 million downloads of the “classic editor” plugin that disables Gutenberg we’re not alone (apparently it stops counting at 5mil, so it is probably more..) .With the themes being custom made to suit my client’s branding and needs, there is no need for a bloated and confusing page builder that adds page weight for things we’re never going to use. A recent update added a compulsory blocks stylesheet which was never even used on the sites I build. It’s possible to turn this off but I look after nearly a hundred sites so that’s a faff I can do without.

I use Advanced Custom Fields to create a simple page builder that uses very little code and makes sense to clients. I’m surprised (but also glad) that WordPress haven’t bought ACF as this approach works great in terms of both code and usability.

Other included junk

The included jQuery is ‘render blocking’ and destroys page speed as measure by Google Pagespeed Insights. A huge amount of work and a caching plugin is required to get decent speed out of WordPress.  WooCommerce is slow as hell compared to something like OpenCart too, and the whole platform is carrying years of technical debt.

Full site editing aims to allow people complete control over their site layout and design. A raft of theme authors are getting in on this as well so there are loads of similar options. It’s confusing, fiddly and easy to make a mess with these site editors. I’m not sure who this stuff is aimed at, as most people I know can’t be bothered to learn all this stuff. Good design is so much more than slinging random blocks onto a page.  Are WordPress trying to remove the need for theme authors and web designers?

Fix these things pls

WordPress has fundamental issues that need addressing so I’d like to see an interface for custom post types in core, archive descriptions, general speed and overall code quality sorted out rather than focusing on adding horrible gradients to images, changing code that upsets a minority and spending countless hours to make full site editing a thing.

Business

It’s clear to see WordPress are making a ton of money from WordPress.com which uses a form of Gutenberg, plus the paid plugins for WordPress/WooCommerce. That’s fine as businesses are here to make money, but I’d like to see Automattic not forcing these choices on the rest of us.

It’s getting to the point where I would actually pay a developer fee to not have to deal with all this consumer level stuff forced on me. I’ve made a business out of WordPress website design so a reasonable monthly or yearly cost would be acceptable.

As a side note, it’s extremely clever getting a worldwide community to help develop WordPress and then use it for their own commercial ends.

Issues with free/freemium

While I’m soapboxing, I’m utterly sick of freemium plugins that nag us to death once installed, and abandoned or poor quality free plugins with no support. We can code a lot of things in the theme to reduce plugin use and I support SEOPress and Plausible as I appreciate what they are working towards. Paying a yearly fee for good functionality and support is well worth it. Paying the ‘growth hacking’ assholes to stop nagging me, or getting conned into paying a yearly fee for basic functionality is not OK.

Summary

I’d like to see a stripped back version of WordPress for developer use with no full site editing and no Gutenberg included. I’d also like to see a focus on speed and code quality rather than other features that are largely irrelevant to me as a designer and developer.