Data from Google Trends noted search requests around the website builder boomed in October 2024, especially on October 8, where it reached a peak score of 100.
The spike in interest signals a shift in user behavior, indicating an active search for options which align more closely with user expectations around performance, control, and transparency.
No one’s going to remember this in a year. Remember when Unity supposedly torched their business? They’re doing fine.
I’ve been giving static site generators a go, specifically Hugo. Webdevs have always treated static sites as unserious, but there’s plenty of sites out there where it’d be ideal. An awful lot of those sites are currently on WordPress.
Does your local mechanics shop need a dynamic site? No. Local restaurant that points you to an external site for online ordering? No. Little gift shop selling locally produced goods? If they don’t intend to sell online, then no. A manufacturer with product pages that have a “where to buy” button that sends you to their sales partner in your country? Nope.
How many CPU cycles are wasted on these sites that could be nothing more than reading a file and streaming it back to the client?
it is not about wp engine. wordpress has just gotten really shit. gutenberg forced onto users eventhough it is the worst rated plugin in history. connect to wordpress,woocommerce,elementor,yoast so they also have a store to sell you shit with a subscripton. woocommerce pdf slip plugin…4$/month on the woostore…
enshittification has won this game.
The point of free software is that it doesn’t have owners and you (individually or collectively) can just create an “alternative” yourself by forking it if you disagree with anything its maintainers do.
Yet, wordpress relies on a defacto central store for plugins, where properties (along with the userbases) of private companies can be taken over by Matt Mullenweg.
That definitely sounds like a problem. I am not familiar enough with WordPress, is that store not FOSS or are the plugins not or what is going on?
The plugin was an open source, but commercial product. It was forked and its store page was taken over by wordpress.org which unilaterally controls this store. Plugin updates were redirected to the fork, so essentially all users (bar the ones on wp engine, ironically) were stolen. Also, many sites were broken overnight by this move.
It’s a jarring situation, and frankly, I think it goes beyond the CEO being an asshat (he surely is). But I think this whole story shows signs of a mental illness.
bring back greymatter cowards.
(but for real, moveable type is probably the closest alternative)
