Never has, never will
There I was, curled up with my phone, reading an article by a new content creator I discovered.
In his blurb at the end of the latest article, he had this almost as a mere afterthought:
Also, WordPress sucks.
Orly? I thought.
I read some more of his articles and saw why he said this, but as a long-term WordPress user, it still stung.
He's been quiet of recent, but you can probably still track him down.
Not just no, but heck to the no
Um … no, WordPress doesn't suck. Never has, never will.
As long as I'm writing online, I'll always have my content self-hosted.
And I'll recommend at some point you do also. Here's why.
Proud WordPress user since 2005
My primary website has been up since 2004.
I was tiring of doing hard-coded HTML for each article, so I looked into the content management systems out there.
After a week-long fling with Blogger, I began using WordPress.
I've used WordPress since Version 1.5, starting in May 2005.
Over twenty years without a break. That's some staying power reserved for other big players like Google and Microsoft.
I can appreciate why some creators think WordPress sucks.
Three big reasons:
Self-hosted WordPress isn't free.
Although the WordPress software itself is free, it costs to register a domain and to acquire web hosting.
This is at least $100/year, more if you want high-reliability hosting.
Tack on spam protection, security, premium themes and plugins, and so forth, it can easily run hundreds per year.
Self-hosted WordPress takes time to maintain.
Even with the best setup, a self-hosted WordPress installation needs to be updated and otherwise maintained.
Compare this with Medium or Substack, for which the maintenance time is zero. They handle it.
Maintenance and upgrading isn't for everyone, and although WordPress has gotten way easier to maintain than in the beginning, it's still not completely hands-off.
Self-hosted WordPress in general has more friction than other alternatives.
WordPress has more menus, more clicks, more finagling, more options to go through than Medium or Substack.
More things to do that aren't writing.
To be fair, Medium and Substack have you choose tags and categories, and upload images as well.
But for these platforms it's just … quicker.
If I had to guess, I'd say that the extra friction is what turns off a lot of other writers the most about WordPress.
It would be why they say WordPress sucks.
Other platforms are just flat-out easier to use.
What self-hosted WordPress has that these other platforms don't
The main thing is control:
- Editorial control. For the most part, you can write about what you want to write about, without being canceled by the platform. (Go too far and your hosting could cancel you, but that's different. You're generally being extremely distasteful if things get that far.)
- Presentation control. If you want to put ads on there (or not), highlight other writers (or not), change fonts, change how anything looks, you can. It's your site and your prerogative.
- Access control. You decide who gets to see your content, not the platform's algorithm. You get to decide whether your content is behind a paywall, or not. You don't have to pay the platform extra to get additional reach for your posts.
The secondary, intangible thing is peace of mind.
Although there are costs to maintaining self-hosted WordPress, those are mechanical and within my control.
Worrying about my site and content going away is something I don't do.
For me, that's worth the cost.
I've seen too many other writers get their accounts suspended, sometimes permanently.
No thanks!
An old-guard blogger, still figuring things out.
I've only been writing on Medium since 2024, but I'm still at it, and still post to WordPress.
Call it the voice of experience, or the signs of stubbornness.
Either way: I send out unvarnished insights on the creator journey six times a week.
Join me as we create better together!
Photo by Unseen Studio on Unsplash