If you're a developer, just build a static site. If you're not a developer, you're going to have to pay.
Wordpress has a powerful ecosystem, great usability, and it's free. Hard to beat.
I'm playing with Webflow for one of my other sites. Content editing capabilities and large scale content management is lightyears behind Wordpress still.
Nonsense.
I've been using WordPress since Jan 2004 and followed a huge number of sites. Not a single one has turned into a 'content farm'.
Yes some have stopped blogging. A very very small number have switched to a different way of creating their site. But what you say is nonsense.
>"The only way to not become a content farm is to use commercial hosting"
Junk statement. It's the owner of the blog that determines the content, not the host.
I would suggest that you followed the wrong sites.
I still use WordPress
- All Wrongs Reversed - 4 Color Rebellion - Egalicontrarian - Neojapanisme
There are more but they only get and stay hacked if it’s been dormant for several years, so by the time I see the spam in my RSS reader, I have typically forgotten about the blog.
I've been running WP installations for years and never had a problem with them getting hacked.
That's what I did many years ago, and I'm still there. Wordpress.com is easy and that's why it's big.
(Note: this is not an argument against rolling your own. Do it if you want to!)
I'd argue the opposite about using managed hosting -- a self-hosted WordPress site is more likely to outlast one on managed WordPress hosting for the sole reason of cost. Managed hosting is significantly more expensive, and justifying that ongoing cost may cause the owner of the site to discontinue it sooner than they would otherwise.
The biggest risk in all of the WordPress ecosystem are third-party plugins. Minimizing the use of those and installing something like Wordfence (free or paid) would go a long way towards mitigating that risk. It wouldn't be non-zero, but it'd be acceptably low.