It’s almost a decade that I had been using WordPress as my passion and priority technology either for my own portfolio website or for my clients freelancing projects.
I started seriously in 2017 to build sites with WordPress, It’s 2026. Roughly 9 years. But I was learning this since very long even before 2015 or 2016.
I was fallen for the fact that I can publish my thoughts through my own website on my own server, slowly I discovered that I could build a website where products can be sold, it can also work as a web app, that too writing even any single line of code which truly blow my mind off.
But sadly, since very long time, not even months but years, there’s no native WordPress development from the author’s side. Although we’re in a brink of the release of WordPress 7.0, I could see no significant improvement other than the block editor which is a good move from the classic editor.
The WordPress for basic functionalities also needs 10-15 external plugins and codes to make a site work smoother, not faster with core basic functionalities.
While UX Design was improving in 2021 – 2022 worldwide and wide popularity of web design and publishing platforms like Webflow and Framer, WordPress just lost the race and never tried to innovate.
While I was progressing as a designer, but being not able to copy those basic UI designs on a live WordPress website made me think for alternatives, While I tried other web tools like Webflow or Framer, I was not satisfied for the fact that I’ve to pay for this every month or every year and also it’s a proprietary software not OpenSource.
Then my search started and ended up at Coding!
I started learning coding basics like the HTML and CSS. But gave up in the middle due to my zero interest in learning a coding language which I was always against for.
I always believed in creating some meaningful. I am not that mathematical inside. I believed that creating something should be easy and seamless. It also should be cheap or affordable and worldclass. Which WordPress was fulfilling for a long period of time. This current article which you’re reading right now is also written with WordPress on my personal blog for your information.
I’ve solved many big problems for big companies by having websites on WordPress and generating revenue for their businesses.
Then I started learning about the Roadmap of Website development deeper.
I was very sure for the fact that my WordPress experience will definitely help me in scaling and boosting my development career and passion in the future.
Then AI arrived.
Yes it’s generative AI, that reshaped the way I think, I design, I write and eventually I code.
Yes, even though I am decent in writing in code now, I don’t write code at all. I use AI.
Yes.
I completely shifted to coding for basic website development needs and got introduced to many other technologies and frameworks that made the journey more interesting and fruitful eventually.
And by that time, I was sick and tired of the bloatware tech in WordPress and it’s external plugins which made the sites slow and worst. The manual design took days which client was not ready to pay extra for the time. As in India, you’re paid lumpsum for a project no based upon hours.
Everything came to a point for instant delivery. Instant results. Instant satisfaction. Zero efforts and inputs from the client’s side as well.
Security was another concern from WordPress side. Then the Automatic vs Hosting company drama, Maintenance fatigue, the plugin dependency trap, all made me to go away from WordPress and choose AI and modern React based frameworks for most of my works as most of the sites will be static, business, portfolio or blog related websites only.
So now the ecosystem has changed primarily towards a react based development framework.
I’ve majority of tools like Lovable, Bolt, V0, Trae IDE and VS Code and Finally I chose Cursor as my preferred IDE for most of my developments which will be made with React.
Nextjs became my go to framework and GitHub & Vercel as my day to day deployment and Hosting partner.
While I was very rigid for WordPress, Eventually I started looking for open source in coding also NextJS is a Vercel product I’ve been busy looking for more sustainable frameworks and tools that will be selfhosted and open source primarily to become cost efficient and product world class websites and products.
Then I have partnered with a small development team who consistently help my development journey and freelancing projects.
Came to the world of Headless CMS from WordPress. For e.g. started using Strapi, Sanity and Payload for blogs related applications and websites.
Ghost for standalone blogging websites as it’s selfhosted and open source and modern as well.
Now I even gave up designing as well, Because UX is now all there in the internet and my AI models like Claude or Gemini can access them and design and replicate in few seconds, there’s no need to spend hours of time redesigning screens myself.
Even though I am away from WordPress now, But I’m tracking the progress of the platform, the moment I’ll use this technology when I’ll get a handsome amount of money to design and build pages in WordPress natively which will be a manual effort and worth the time spend. Or if there’s some notable improvements from the core WordPress software which will make my mind to get back to it. Until then it’s a pause.
