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Comment by claudiulodro | Hacker News Reader

Interesting that WordPress is the most dreaded tech every single year for the last 3+ years, yet WP "market share" is increasing every single year (it's now powering 1/3 of the web). Is it a disconnect between developers and non-developers? Is it just that developers don't like to work on "boring" tech, and working on WP is not a super-great resume builder? Curious to hear what people think.

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Having built lots of WordPress sites over the years, I can give you 2 strong reasons why it continues to grow, despite being disliked by software engineers:

1. There is no easier way to set up a standard marketing/business website, despite many quality attempts to build replacements. The plugin library is a big part of this.

2. It's extremely easy for anyone to start hacking on, leading to lots of developers "cutting their teeth" on WordPress by following online tutorials. Show me a self-taught front-end developer and I'll be shocked if they didn't learn on a WordPress site. This has good & bad aspects, of course.

Wordpress sites are easily done without any development work. There are many platforms providing ready to use wordpress sites, with nice themes and common needs covered. It is not targeted toward developers at all.

Comparing wordpress and developers, is a bit like comparing how many people like tyres (everybody got some on their car) to how many people enjoy making tyres for a living (not a very common activity).

That makes sense. Good analogy!

It's horrible to work with, but it pays the bills, so people work with it.

It's a testament to how being non-technical friendly leads to market success.

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