We’re Sorry We Told You To Install WordPress

Hi, Internet.

There’s a lot of mistakes one can make in their youth. Drinking too much, partying too hard, going into debt, voting Libertarian…

As web developers, though, we did something far worse.

You see, we were helping you set up a new website. You were a friend of ours, trying to keep your costs low, and you asked us how to set up a website.

We said, “Have you heard of WordPress? It’s free, and it’s got lots of plugins to configure your site.”

We meant well. And we did this over and over. We told ourselves that while WordPress had its problems, it worked well enough. Sure, plugins were inconsistent and it was hard to find ones that worked exactly as you wanted, but look man, they were free! How can you go wrong with free?

Later you said:

“Hey, WordPress told me to upgrade, and now my site went down. What happened?”

Or you said:

“Hey, I updated a plugin and my site went down. What happened?”

Or you said:

“Hey, I did nothing and my site went down. What happened?”

Or you said:

“Hey, my site’s still up, but now it’s redirecting everyone to Russia to download software. Is that bad?”

By then, it was too late. We had already stopped telling people to install WordPress. We had seen the creeping horror of plugins that self-destructed, of themes that collapsed under their own weight, of pieces stapled onto WordPress that didn’t function or resemble anything like WordPress. We saw that WordPress was, by design, a nightmare of web applications. We had flocked to it because it was a solution where none existed, and did not realize that it was a solution that we would come to regret.

Yes. WordPress had become the IE6 of web applications, once applauded for its innovations, and praised for its price, and now we could not escape it. Much like one of those fish-tongue-eating parasites that become the fish’s tongue for a while until the fish dies, WordPress’s approach to web application design was also pretty gross.

Even though we regretted it, we could not undo the damage we had heaped upon the Internet. We were young. We didn’t understand.

And so now, having grown out of our youth, we press on. Despite what we have learned, we continue to fix WordPress sites, and install the plugins you ask us to. Because we must. Because that’s what you have.

Because that’s what we told you to install.

And we’re sorry.