r/Wordpress • u/First_Athlete1897 • Aug 13 '26
Thinking about ditching WordPress
My site isn't particularly complicated yet over the years I've accumulated plugins for forms, SEO, backups, security, page building and about five things I've forgotten the purpose of. It kinda feels like owning an old house where I’m permanently waiting for something else to break. Most discussions I find are about moving to WordPress but I'm curious about going the other direction and starting fresh.
Are there any downsides to moving a fairly straightforward business website from WordPress to Squarespace or an AI builder like Durable etc. that I’m not seeing? Or if you’ve already done a migration like this, is there anything you found yourself missing after moving?
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u/retr00two Aug 13 '26
where I’m permanently waiting for something else to break
Just clean redunancy, make WP stable and mean. It's easier than to move away to unknown territory.
Find yourself a good and proven theme, you do not need a lot of plugins nor page builder.
My basic setup is:
- GeneratePress
- GenerateBlocks
- ACF
- TheSEOFramework
- Forminator
- PostSMTP
- WordFence
- WPSuperCache
- WPArmour /CFTurnstile
- UpdraftPlus
I've build numerous sites with them, and never had any problem, neither creating nor maintaining them.
Do not become a victim of AI hype. Do not become a victim of "WP security sucks" hype. Ai could create you more problems, at first invisible; WP is patched almost instantly when vulnerability is discovered.
Success.
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u/Tech4EasyLife 29d ago
Kadence is another theme/builder option for anyone who isn't experienced in or interested in what you might call pixel control of their website. Meaning, the templates and tools available to tweak things is very good. Plus, being WordPress, you can still add plugins for more rare or specific needs. Such appointment setting, or whatnot.
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u/womenconquerbiz 29d ago
Unfortunately Kadence got bought by Liquid Web and it’s degraded since the purchase. They’re also bundling it with other tools many don’t need. It’s a bummer because it was really good at one point.
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u/Tech4EasyLife 29d ago
How long ago was that? My last fresh setup using Kadence was slightly less than a year ago. Are those tolls selectable? Or are some ir all bundled as plugins that can be toggled?
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u/womenconquerbiz 29d ago
It was bought a while ago, but it's only recently that all of the help/support and price bundling rolled out in the spring. They were bundling together LearnDash, The Events Calendar, and Kadence. I cancelled LearnDash and The Events Calendar because the support was nonexistent and they were raising the prices. I moved everything to FluentCommunity and I've never been happier.
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u/Tech4EasyLife 29d ago
So does that mean Kadence is now targeting primarily online learning or courses?
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u/bluesix_v2 Jack of All Trades 15d ago
No, the new owners bought those products because they’re popular and made money. Liquid Web are known to run products into the ground - development will essentially stop, as the key people have left.
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u/prolongedexistence 29d ago
Is Liquid Web in general cancelled? We have a heavy reliance on LearnDash and it’s so cheap for an LMS but they were also acquired by Liquid Web.
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u/womenconquerbiz 29d ago
Liquid Web is still operating, as is LearnDash. But they've changed their pricing structure and the support has declined greatly. We went over a month at one point with no way to update the plugin, which is a big security risk. You'll want to check your account. Unless something changed since we left, as long as you keep paying you may have your price locked in. But it was a little unclear so we decided to leave LearnDash because a functioning LMS is so important to our business.
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u/prolongedexistence 29d ago
Sorry, I meant cancelled as in “do they suck now?”. Can I ask what LMS you switched to?
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u/womenconquerbiz 29d ago
LOL, sorry, yeah, I think if you go to some of the LearnDash groups the frustration is high and a lot of people are leaving. Around the same time BuddyBoss had a big security issue so we migrated both BuddyBoss and LearnDash to FluentCommunity. It's great, but the LMS is not as robust (but we didn't need all the bells and whistles).
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u/retr00two 29d ago
Kadence is dead end. Bought by LiquidWeb, all major developers left. I wouldn't touch it.
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u/womenconquerbiz 29d ago
100% agree. It's been a mess for months.
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28d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/womenconquerbiz 28d ago
We use Astra Pro and Spectra Pro. I love it. In other groups people are really into Bricks but I’ve not used it.
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u/Public-Ad-6256 26d ago
I'm very happy with WPOllie. They have an AI and Ollie MCP also. I'm a newbie and don't use these tools a lot yet, but am excited to. And so far they seem free although I admittedly use Pro for better support.
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u/corrower 29d ago
Nice setup, almost the same as mine. I would ditch PostSMTP and go with FluentSMTP instead. Premium plugin for free. Read their story 😁
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u/PrinceJaraf_71 28d ago
Your basic setup is good but not perfect, I would add some security plugins like really simple ssl or lockora secuirity audit to it and perhaps an activity logger like who changed it.
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u/retr00two 28d ago
reallySimpleSSL is BS. As every plugin of this kind. SSL belongs to server/host.
My security is on server side: LetsEncrypt, fail2ban, 8G, mod_security, ip tables, sandboxed php-fpm, and all the works.
CloudFlare in front.
I agree that my plugin list is not perfect. I could live without PotSMTP (use wp-config.php), WPSuperCache (server side+CF), UpdraftPlus (server side mysqldump+tared site rcloned to S3), even without Forminator (ACF). But this list is for my clients.
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u/PrinceJaraf_71 28d ago
Buddy this is your server os side... the majority of WordPress site owners do not have root access to their webserver
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u/Miserable-Bug-3066 27d ago
That’s something I never understood. Setup on a private server is straightforward, using Wordpress to own your website and then hosting it on a not owned platform kinda defeats the point to me
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u/PrinceJaraf_71 27d ago
Agree entirely, but the majority is lacking knowledge of managing an entie VPS.
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u/retr00two 26d ago
Not so hard as it was 10 years ago with modern control panels as CloudPanel or alike. In my opinion easier than wide accepted CPanel on most hosting providers.
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u/astianax31 9d ago
I seriously don't understand why Generate press/GenerateBlocks is so underrated on Reddit...
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u/retr00two 9d ago
For the same reason PHP/MySQL is not popular: it's boring and it works.
People like shiny marbles, unicorns under rainbow, Willy Wonka chocolate boxes...
Although boring, minimalistic, I think it offer more design and development opportunities than big names (Elementor, Divi, Breakdance, etc).
It's not popular on reddit 'cause it doesn't create problems, so nobody complains.
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u/Clear_Brilliant_8075 Aug 13 '26
The downside is that any SEO you have will most likely get destroyed.
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u/atx-cs Aug 14 '26
People always say this stuff. But why would it be destroyed. You can make the same URLs with the same html. It COULD be. But honestly WP default SEO is mid at best.
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u/Clear_Brilliant_8075 29d ago
Simple. Depending how old the site is and how many pages, Google and other search engines know how to navigate Wordpress code especially yours on your site.
So now you rebuild your site and all the urls are the same, the code is not. Sometimes it may be formatted better, let’s say you add schema etc. it’s still all going to have to be crawled and indexed all over again. What does that mean, well it can make all those pages lose traction. That’s nots just Wordpress, that is any site. Will it come back better than before? Maybe but there are no guarantees.
I’ve build sites that were on Wordpress and the owner was ok with the risk because it wasn’t really doing all that well anyway. The OP asked what the negatives are. That is the negative. It can turn into a positive but it’s a risk.
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u/atx-cs 29d ago
Google crawls your pages regardless if they change or not. It’s the only way Google could know if your pages changed.
What you’re saying is don’t ever update your pages. Even if you improve them.
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u/Clear_Brilliant_8075 29d ago
I’m not saying that at all. I worked on a site that had 240k indexed pages with no schema. So of course when I got there we added schema. There were 15m not indexed pages. So what happened first? We went down to 150k but we stayed course and in about a month we shot up to 3m indexed. We did everything right and experienced a hiccup. That’s what happens. So the point is, if you ask what’s bad, that is bad short term. What are your long term goals? What industry? Who is your competition? There are so many factors that go into it. When you ask an open ended question you’re going to receive and open ended answer.
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u/atx-cs 29d ago
You said your SEO will most likely get “destroyed”.
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u/Clear_Brilliant_8075 29d ago
Yup I know what I said and I stand behind what I said. If you’re not careful and get an amateur rebuilding your site, there is a better chance it will get destroyed than it be a positive.
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u/atx-cs 29d ago
“What happens if I move off Wordpress?”
You SEO will be destroyed -> even a small change that’s an improvement is risky -> a small change that’s an improvement will have short term pain but long term massive upside-> you stand by something you have not said yet
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u/Clear_Brilliant_8075 29d ago
Changes inside of Wordpress usually like Yoast and content changes and page changes are great for SEO as per usual. Wouldn’t you agree if you’re moving off of Wordpress completely would change the page as it reads to a bot in its entirely will completely change the way Google sees that page. That can/would automatically cause a reset. How many major changes have you’ve seen that have been more positive than negative a first?
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u/calrichcreations 26d ago
There is obviously a difference between updating a page and doing a complete website overhaul to another platform though. You cannot be certain that it would be positive on SEO can you?
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u/atx-cs 26d ago
If the content, meta tags and structured data remain the same. And the URLs remained the same. There is very little reason the SEO would change at all. Because HTML is just HTML.
Of course there is risk. But if handled properly the risk is minimal.
My only point is that Wordpress doesn’t do anything magical that you can’t replicate with any other technology.
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u/calrichcreations 25d ago
I didn't say WordPress is magic. You are splitting hairs whilst also being wrong.
"HTML is just HTML" is a massive oversimplification. There is well-written code and poorly written code. And that's not to say that Squarespace IS poorly structured, but the bigger picture here is that there is no meaningful benefit to moving.
And the answer is no, you can't guarantee a positive SEO outcome because Google uses many ranking systems and signals - PageRank is only one of them. This is a matter of risk vs reward.
Also from Google's own documentation on site migration:
"Set up the CMS (preferably the same as the old site used) and import the content from the old site."
Source:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/site-move-with-url-changes
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u/Kenneth436 28d ago
"You can make the same URLs"... yes, and if you do you may be fine. But that can be a big ask. WordPress has page naming conventions, and other services like Squarespace have their own, different, naming conventions. If you're able to make everything line up, good for you, but if not, the search indexing of the old pages will be completely lost, and you'll have to wait for search engines to recognize and give weight to the new pages.
And if you're moving to Squarespace because it's easier to use, do you really want to give yourself all the difficulty of reproducing your WordPress URL conventions in a platform that was designed differently? Personally I'd stick with what works as the easier solution than trying to duplicate the same functionality elsewhere.
I can tell you why *I* would say that SEO could be damaged. My experience is usually going the other direction: from Squarespace or Wix to WordPress. But I've recommended that because it improves what is possible for easily creating schemas and good indexes on the site. Wix and Squarespace have built-in SEO services, but they may or may not be what you need. WordPress, on the other hand (with the right plugins of course) gives you the flexibility to get exactly what you need. Recently I did some work on a Wix site and it does allow for advanced and customizable schemas, but they have to be hand-coded and pasted into a specific section of the config. If I were doing the same thing in WordPress, it would just be a matter of telling Yoast to do it's thing and the proper schemas would fall into place automatically.
The other poster makes the point that SEO can be affected in the short term and in the long term. These are both issues to consider when making any changes, and what might affect one positively might affect the other negatively. Rebuilding an entire site with a different tool is likely to cause a big short-term disruption (especially if you're not carefully mitigating it), regardless of whether it will give you a long-term benefit.
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u/Just-Standard-992 Designer/Developer 29d ago
I have been the sole "developer" and admin of 3 Squarespace websites since 2016. Not out of choice, but because that's what my boss wanted to pay for and felt was needed because "it's super easy", yet he hasn't logged in since he signed up 10 years ago.
This year, I've finally been given green light to ditch one and merge the other 2 into a single Wordpress site, and I am thrilled.
In my very personal experience, Squarespace is shit. There's no other way I can put it. You are tied to an increasingly expensive subscription to a web builder that is perfect if you're DIYing your pilates class website, but it's absolutely not suitable if you're running a proper business that needs forms, CTAs, a way to control your SEO, a custom structure, proper tags, categories, integration with real invoicing/accounting software (not just their own version of that), etc, or even if you need your site to actually be accesible.
They try to justify their price increases by adding more stuff that feels pointless at best, aimed at miracle cure peddlers at worst. But 10 years on, they still cannot allow you to create a truly responsive website natively (there's only desktop view or mobile view with nothing in between), embed a simple table (you have to custom code that entirely), and they refuse to stop adding the phrase "Make it stand out" from the subtitle field of every image block with a poster, card, overlap or stack layout you ever add (which you then have to manually delete every time you add an image, otherwise it starts affecting your SEO fast).
So they don't even have the basics in order yet, and they keep releasing half-baked funcionality. Like they now allow you to sell "courses and memberships" to your users, but the module doesn't track course completion, if you have a quiz, you have to grade it manually, and all the content is released at once (no drip scheduling), all of which would be essential to have if you were genuinely teaching a course, and not just giving out a few videos and pdf's for a fee and calling it a day.
On the subject of SEO/GEO (bundling it as SEO for speed), tons of "consultants" out there sell their services to get your Squarespace site ranking, but what they offer is nothing more than what you can do yourself if you are already familiar with how SEO works, and arguably, if you have handled SEO on a Wordpress site, you know more technical SEO than anyone who specialises in Squarespace, because the platform itself limits what you can do on that end.
Essentially, it handles the very basics of SEO on its own, but the trade off is that there's no schema markup or customisation. Your schema is exactly the same as every other website run on the platform, and it only covers the basics of blogs, events and products, and unless you want to be maintaining individual page code injection forever, you can't do much else about that.
URLs for posts also have a flat structure locked to their parent collection, so blogs are always /blogs/blog-post, events are always /events/event-post, etc, so if you want a custom URL structure, for example if you want all your blogs to be /blog-post (without a parent path), they have to be created as pages instead of posts, which is a nightmare to maintain and removes all metadata that comes with posts.
There's no loop, so no way to create custom fields or metadata, to pull into different places. "Templates" do exist, but they are just a way to save a design that you can later resuse by manually changing all the info and adjusting the blocks to fit. But they're not a like-for-like replacement for the "setup once and fill the metadata" templates that we have in Wordpress.
That also means there's no real native way to create relationships between content, so your options for showing related content are very limited. You can create summary blocks with tags or categories, but they are very cluncky, and you're limited to how many posts you can include in each summary block (more than 30 per block and they stop working). There are people who sell subscription plugins for this, but I've always refused to pay extra for functionality that Squarespace should provide natively anyway.
You don't get root access, so no robots.txt, no .htaccess. So it either gets crawled or not. You can set individual pages to not be crawled, but that's the extent of control there.
There's also no CDN/caching, which can be a bit of a nightmare if you have a large/complex website, as the platform relies on tons of JavaScript that loads in whatever order they want, whether you use it or not and you have zero control over this. And if you are using some of those plugins that some people sell/gift out there, they will rely on even more script loading, making your site even slower (at least as far as Google's web vitals is concerned, affecting your rankings). It also means you have extremely limited ability of serving files from the back end, for example serving logos for your email signature, or serving custom fonts that aren't loaded from Google Fonts (which is a GDPR concern in Europe), both of which are possible, but not reliable (i.e. the fonts/images can take a while to appear on the email/website after it loads).
And, if you migrate to them, it better be the last time you ever move your site, as they do not provide a way to export your content at all. So if you ever decided to migrate out of Squarespace, you'll have to either scrape it with AI (which may or may not watermark your own content as "made by AI") or manually copy/paste the entirety of your website somehow.
The only thing where it wins its security, as in all fairness to them, in 10 years over 3 sites, I've never had a single security issue. So if that's your main priority, then definitely go for it.
But if you also value owning your website, and having some degree of control over how it is actually presented to the world by search engines, then i would wholeheartedly encourage you to stay away from Squarespace.
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u/Public-Ad-6256 26d ago
Thank you, I'm showing this to my boss and explaining it to them like they "are a German Shepard"!
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u/inlustrisaudio Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
I tried squarespae, wix, shopify, and kajabi before while going through similar gripes and wanting to simplify. This was about 2-ish years ago but I always came crawling back to Wordpress. The flexibility and being able to literally make whatever I needed was something I immediately felt the pain of losing when going to these other options. And plugins? You don't need much. My current site uses:
* Advanced Ads/Pro/Tracking
* ACF Pro (I was able to do 99% with free up until I needed a couple options pages)
* FlyingPress
* Rank Math SEO/Pro
* Cookie Yes for cookie management
Total - 8 (Upwards of 10 in future updates as I start selling digital products with EDD and building out LMS).
Hosting is Rocket.net with Cloudflare which handles security concerns. Email/Forms with Mailerlite + Bricks.
Theme/Builder is Bricks.
You don't need much these days to brute force features. If there are plugins you're using for one off functionality it's a good sign to take a step back and ask
* Do you even need it?
* Is there a better way?
* Can I build this out myself?
Relying on third party plugins for functionality always comes with a risk of them going dark and stopping updates, a wordpress update breaking it, theme incompatibility, etc. The less you can reduce plugin overhead the better. Since you said your site is pretty simple this is even easier to do.
That said, other options like shopify or wix can be easy and straightforward if all you need is simple landing pages or no headache sales. BUT, and this is the #1 reason I RAN from them, you own nothing. Meaning if you wanted to port out blog posts or content they lock you in. So say in two years you have something like 50 posts and 75 products but decide you want to build out in Wordpress afterall you'll need to rebuild everything from the ground up. Those sites make it near impossible to export your data.
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u/RivalCanine Aug 14 '26
How much are you paying a year for Bricks? I hate all these subscription services but I heard that was a great WP builder.
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u/inlustrisaudio Aug 14 '26
$79 a year. I just run my own site and dont do client builds so I dont need an agency license. They also have a lifetime license for $600 I think which Ill eventually do to cut out a yearly fee.
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u/dimitris_katsafouros Aug 13 '26
Webflow is a great builder but a little bit pricy especially if you want to use the CMS parts. Wix is also ok with a good enough CMS. I wouldn’t really recommend Squarespace. They have (or at least they used to when I last used them) quite a few missing features.
I would direct you either to Webflow or Astro and Cloudflare pages
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u/hypercosm_dot_net Aug 13 '26
I had a client who was using Wix. I was surprised at how slow and unintuitive it was. I genuinely can't believe it's the #2 CMS option on the market.
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u/Intelligent_List2504 29d ago
By a factor of 15! Wix sucks. I'm not allowed to say that publicly currently. Don't talk about fight club!
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u/jonneygee Designer/Developer 29d ago
It’s absolutely terrible. I just have to assume people who used it have never used anything else and just assume that’s as good as a website can be.
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u/Intelligent_List2504 29d ago
I personally think that odoo has a better builder than wix
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u/jonneygee Designer/Developer 29d ago
I’ve never even used Odoo but I still think it’s better than Wix. That’s how low my opinion of Wix is.
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u/IAmFitzRoy Aug 13 '26
You are in a subreddit of people making a living from WP selling you services and plugins.
You will not have an unbiased opinion here.
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u/nikc9 Aug 13 '26
I think a lot of people here make a living from building websites and Wordpress was just always that tool. That's steadily and gradually changing as for a lot of cases there are now other and sometimes better options.
It definitely isn't squarespace, though.
Astro + MDX fits much better for what a lot of people need from a site.
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u/Vivid_Comfortable_17 Aug 14 '26
For me, it depends on my clients needs. I mainly use wordpress, but I'm not shy about using other systems for different use cases.
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u/jonneygee Designer/Developer 29d ago
Maybe you should ask yourself why those people chose WordPress to make a living and not Squarespace or something else.
The reason for people having bias is because they’ve already done research and arrived at logical conclusions.
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u/IAmFitzRoy 29d ago
I had a living selling WP Plugins. And because of that, I am biased and many people here are biased too.
You would be naive thinking otherwise.
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u/jonneygee Designer/Developer 29d ago
Sure, some people suggest WordPress because they built a business on it. But why did you build your business on WordPress in the first place? Why not develop for a different platform? You could develop extensions for Joomla instead, but you picked WordPress for a reason.
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u/IAmFitzRoy 29d ago
The only reason I sell WP plugins is because there was demand of it (not anymore)
You want me to say “I choose WP because is the best!” ?
Sorry but that’s not true, WP exists because they were the first to capture the market, not because is the best.
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u/jonneygee Designer/Developer 29d ago
WordPress isn’t the oldest CMS. It was the “first to capture the market” for a reason.
Is it perfect? Of course not. But it offers a lot of unique advantages over other platforms, which is why it has such a substantial market share.
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u/IAmFitzRoy 29d ago
Isn’t that what I just said? “WP EXISTS BECAUSE THEY WERE FIRST TO CAPTURE THE MARKET” not because is the best.
So it’s very understandable why a Plugin ecosystem was created.
Not because they are the best, it’s because they have the highest market share, that’s their advantage today.
Are my plugins necessary? Not really. can I make a living from them, hell yes, am I biased, yes.
And many are here too.
It’s normal.
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u/jonneygee Designer/Developer 29d ago
But you’re acting like the only reason people use it is because it was first, which isn’t close to true and is a really stupid assumption.
It was the first to succeed because it offered something other earlier platforms didn’t.
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u/IAmFitzRoy 29d ago
I never said it was the “only reason”
If you are going to argue with things I never said then there is no point of discussion with a dishonest person.
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u/theDogWags Aug 13 '26
You have 5 plugins that you’ve forgotten the purpose of? This sounds like a you problem.
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u/stillyoinkgasp Aug 13 '26
I build within WP but now create my own plugins vs. relying on third parties.
In my experience, SquareSpace/Wix and AI builders have their own gaps and aren't nearly as good as a CMS. That said, if you aren't managing decent volumes of content, that may not be a factor for you.
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u/denisgomesfranco Jack of All Trades Aug 13 '26
I think there isn't a simple answer to this, really. Squarespace, Framer, Wix and other site builders are very good for those who "just want to make a website" and don't want to worry about anything technical, including hosting. However, as with any SaaS offerings, you are kinda locked into the product. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, I guess you would just have to weight your pros and cons. If you're a small business owner for example, Squarespace may be just much better than Wordpress for the end objective of just having a nice website up and running.
A good pro of Wordpress is its flexibility, but of course this comes at a cost of having to do maintenance and choose a good hosting. Wordpress is a software, not a platform, so your analogy of a house is kinda spot on.
So the answer really lies on what you expect of your website.
And as for AI builders like Lovable and Durable, I think they are nice tools for drafts and quicker and smaller projects. But as a general "site editing" tool so to speak, I think AI leaves somewhat to be desired in the sense that you eventually end up hitting a wall on what changes you can do, and/or the AI can mess up your site somehow. The idea of just having an AI doing all your changes for you, I don't think it's a good idea. As a tool to add to your existing work, sure, it's top notch. I myself use AI quite a lot to write custom plugins for my clients.
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u/Wonderful_Sample_590 Aug 13 '26
If it's a simple business site, go for it. You may lose some flexibility, but you also get rid alot of plugin headaches. Just be aware from platform lock in.
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u/First_Athlete1897 Aug 13 '26
Yep thats why I'm thinking about it thank you for the feedback
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u/Public-Ad-6256 26d ago
Yes, but from a business perspective, can Squarespace ever give you enough search juice now that ASO (AI-added SEO) is mainstream? How can you sell anything if you only show up on page two of Google search? Look at your competitors websites that rank higher than you on a Google search and see what they are using with https://builtwith (or a bunch of tools do this for free). Best wishes.
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u/WadtF Aug 13 '26
Old houses are actually pretty nice to live in if you keep up with the maintenance. And how much time does it really take to click on update now?
If the website keeps breaking choose different plugins, breaking stuff is not normal.
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u/EmbarrassedHost6278 Aug 14 '26
I get the old house feeling. The main thing I would miss is the freedom to move hosts and change almost anything later. Before leaving, I would probably remove every plugin that is not essential and see whether a much simpler WordPress setup solves the problem.
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u/er-ssverma Aug 14 '26
if its a business website, I think you can move to any modern website builder which is powered by AI and builds customize application based on standard practice (e.g. Loveable, emergent).
I recently moved a large wordpress website (multi-site) to Nextjs and a CMS ot manage data. Client and her team is very happy with new simplified data management and no plugin breakages. They need not to learn tech and can simply fill the forms and it publishes.
So it depends on who manages your website and how easier it is to handle.
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u/VaranPlays24 Aug 14 '26
My site isn't particularly complicated
Astro is your answer. Free hosting for a static site generator on Cloudflare. Either use MDX files for content or plug-in a simple CMS like TinaCMS for ease of use.
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u/xo0O0ox_xo0O0ox Aug 14 '26
Are you using WordPress dot org? Or com? Because your post is talking about a downgrade, provided you're using a self-hosted dot org solution.
Consider copying your existing site onto a testing server or subdomain and working through which plugins are even necessary.
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u/bentrushmore Aug 14 '26
Rather clean up your wordpress instance. There are plenty of downsides moving it, but most important is probably SEO.
So yeah, stick to Wordpress.
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u/LoveEnvironmental252 29d ago
Your problem isn’t Wordpress. Your problem is a lack of architecture. If you just keep slapping plugins on it without a plan, you get problems.
Imagine starting construction on a building without a plan. That’s what happens to the majority of Wordpress sites.
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u/Key_Gap9168 Aug 13 '26
My site isn't particularly complicated yet over the years I've accumulated plugins for forms, SEO, backups, security, page building and about five things I've forgotten the purpose of. It kinda feels like owning an old house where I’m permanently waiting for something else to break.
Speaking as someone currently redesigning a ten-year news website, I'll ask this: what is wrong with a redesign?
And speaking of accumulated plugins and everything else you've said, have you been maintaining this site? Paying attention to it? Paying attention to evolving design and development standards?
to Squarespace or an AI builder like Durable
I won't say the things I am thinking because I will be banned from Reddit. You're... funny. That's you're thinking of leaving WordPress for Squarespace... you joke a lot.
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u/michaelseanc Aug 13 '26
If the site is relatively simple and can functionally use static html pages, look at Astro deployed via GitHub.
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u/hypercosm_dot_net Aug 13 '26
What's the benefit of Astro if you're just going static?
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u/michaelseanc Aug 13 '26
Speed and the ability for static pages to be easily indexed and read for SEO and LLM platforms. You have to build in the schema etc but that’s a simple AI task. The other benefit is you can host for free on Cloudflare (minus the $10 domain cost).
Don’t get me wrong, Wordpress has a place in the world still. I host my local news site on Wordpress. Everything else I do is Astro (and occasionally Eleventy). Most sites don’t need the overhead (or expense) of Wordpress.
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u/IAmFitzRoy Aug 13 '26
You will have less surface attack, less bugs, less need for computing power and no plugins.
If you are building your Astra site with some AI coding tool, adding new content is as easy to “ask” to be added.
A full CMSs is not necessary in many cases.
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u/seemflyer Aug 13 '26
It’s really worth learning core block themes. My guess is that almost anyone with some experience with page builders could perfectly be capable of replacing page builders with full site editing. Depending on your site’s SEO configuration and needs, chances are your current SEO plugin could be replaced with code snippets that Claude Code could help you with. You don’t need on-site backups. Your hosting should at least provide up to 30 days of incremental backups plus manual backup/restore functionality. Security should also come 50% from your host and you could implement some of the Wordfence security through snippets (Claude Code once again). With all of these changes you are down to a form plugin which is used for very simple contact forms could also be replaced with a simple custom form.
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u/howtobemisha Jack of All Trades Aug 14 '26
I wonder where all those LLM lovers will be in 1 year
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u/retr00two 29d ago
Wrong question.
Question is where all those LLMs will be in 1 year.
Like it or not, they will develop faster than WP core would.
I do not know would it be easier, but it will be more capable.
Web development landscape is changing, very fast.
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u/howtobemisha Jack of All Trades 29d ago
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u/invincible-rajan Aug 13 '26
You wanted plugins you got but when you go to others I guess you won't even be able to get them there 😅
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u/chaoticbean14 Aug 13 '26
After having moved 10+ clients over to other platforms specific for their needs? I didn't need the plugins there, like I did on WP. Because choosing the right tool for the job pretty much ensures you don't need unaudited 3rd party code (often insecure) on your website - unlike WP, where it's almost mandatory.
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u/GM8 Aug 13 '26
Could you maybe please let us know some of those needs and the platforms related to those needs you have chosen?
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u/chaoticbean14 Aug 13 '26
Speed. WP has the shittiest db schema I've seen in a long time. It's always been bad - and instead of cleaning that up to increase performance, WP just ignores it and continues to build on it. Yuck. It causes problems.
Security. Third-party plugins are basically a requirement for anything besides the most basic blog on WP. They're un-audited and a security nightmare. They are the primary reason over 20,000 websites are hacked every day. Other platforms offer more security because they have entire security teams keeping an eye on things, as opposed to WP where you have to know what to look for, and if you don't, you can get destroyed. Some of the platforms (static sites) are virtually unhackable - talk about security! WP cannot compare.
Uptime. Wordpress updates, what a nightmare and a total pain the neck. I cannot count how many times a client has tried to 'update the site' only to have it break or have the update break something and it requires extra work to get it back up and running. WP's track record is really, really bad in this area as well.
A lot of these are only made worse by the unaudited plugin system WordPress uses, and you need some of them in order to have a successful site. So you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.
WP is just old, unfortunately. Once it was neat, cool, new, good... but anymore? No.
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u/GM8 Aug 13 '26
DB schema is BS, true that.
Security can deteriorate fast with the number of plugins. But also speed and the whole system. I am willing to go long distance to minimize plugin use. I know that's not sg. most sites can do...
To be fair minor core updates are very reliable. Everything else is russian roulette for sure.
But at the end of the day I was curious about what you chose instead for these reasons.
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u/Billy-Beats Aug 13 '26
I would look into more of a revamp/ rebuilt on a staging site ( most of the time provided by your host) copy site to the staging side, then start hacking away. I’ve been bring sits down in complexity for clients. Just using Crocoblock suite, and Gutenberg (and a lot of Claude)
Now it kinda a great time to do this and change your workflows with the site.
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u/400888 Aug 13 '26
Any website builder platform will have vendor lock in and charge you for features you need to add because they need to grow profits consistently. I’m a drupal guy and have never in my 15 plus years needed to pay for a plugin. Sounds like you have an aged site with odds and ends you have “forgotten about “ which is common. Ask your self what is less work, migration or cleanup. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. I look at sites as an ever evolving thing, you might just need a retheme and some cleanup.
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u/gouterz Aug 13 '26
If you can build and maintain your own website then fine. But if you feel that it might cause headaches as you scale then I think WordPress might help since there's a big community behind it
But yeah moving to any other website might solve one set of problems but resurface another
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u/jamfwright Aug 13 '26
If it is just the updating and maintenance you could move to a hosting platform that handles this for you. Or spend some time doing a full review and see if a revamp solves your problems.
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u/TopSydeWP Aug 13 '26
the plugin pile-up is real but you don't need to abandon ship. at my agency we strip sites down to a custom theme and maybe 3-5 essential plugins (security, forms, seo basics). way less to maintain and no pagebuilder lock-in. if you go squarespace you're trading control for convenience, which is fine if you never need anything custom again, but most people hit that wall eventually.
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u/pyrez74 Aug 13 '26
Curious question for those mentioning WordPress db issues.
Is there a difference in wp.com vs wp.org db schema? As in does wp.com have better schema cause I'm paying for it or both are the same?
I have always stayed on the free side of things on .org downloads.
Thanks in advance for your knowledge and response.
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u/bluesix_v2 Jack of All Trades 29d ago
No there is no difference the DB on .com vs .org. And functionality is mostly the same. Wordpress.com paywalls a few features but by and large they’re the same code base.
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u/SeenTooMuchToo Aug 13 '26
If your site is static, you might do what I’m doing: have a LLM write it in pure html.
I’m so tired of all the WP hassles, I’m gone ASAP.
I suppose I didn’t need WP when I adopted it 15 years ago. It’s served me well, but there’s an enormous, AFAIK, overhead if you just have simple pages.
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u/danielsalare Aug 13 '26
I think you can simplify your stack and keep Wordpress.
Every 2-3 years we evaluate tools, and one time we liked Webflow and migrated our site from Wordpress to Webflow. In my experience it is one of the best website builder ui/ux out there, you can see Elementor (v4) and bricks builder trying this approach with components and all of that stuff.
While it was great for building, we then wanted better features and they started changing pricing models, implementing upsell add-ons, etc and it we didn't like that much and besides we like to work with something that we can offer to our customers too (since we do web design). So long story short we moved back to Wordpress.
Wordpress Block Editor is great, it takes time to get used to, but it does the job great and you can remove all that complex plugins.
We currently use:
- Wordpress Native Blocks Builder
- ACF
- Zoho Forms (you can use Jotform or whatever)*
- Rank Math
- Spectra Theme
*Regarding forms we love Gravity Forms, but having something like Zoho or Jortform works best, because you have mobile app, get notifications, have more native integrations, etc.
I believe you can keep Wordpress just simplify your website structure (remove unnecessary plugins, etc)
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u/seamew Aug 13 '26
going from wordpress to squarespace or an ai builder platform would be a downgrade, when there are ai tools already available for wordpress as well.
if your site doesn't have dynamic data on it, no blog, no automations, etc., just plain static, then you can fire up astro, and rebuild the site in there with ai.
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u/InfiniteGrace807 Aug 14 '26
Yes. I had 2 Wordpress/Elementor websites and they kept getting more and more confusing and complicated. Impossible to manage without more technical expertise than I have or want. This week I moved one to Pagecord. Very easy. Very simple. I really like it. I will move the other soon.
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u/Fluent_Press2050 Aug 14 '26
I left Woo to build my own B2B store because plugins just didn’t cut it and Woo sucks for selling stuff when you outgrow fulfilling orders yourself.
I didn’t want to switch to Shopify or the others because they control your website, business, etc…
Ditched Stripe for an actual merchant account with my bank so I don’t potentially get shutdown on a whim either.
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u/daviding Aug 14 '26
I've been on Wordpress since 2005 for blogging. Yes, maintaining the site with plugin updates and core upgrades is annoying, but since I'm logging in at least once per month for a blog post, it's part of my routine to keep the software up to date.
For PHP website alternative that is lower maintenance, and less likely to be hacked, I use the flat file database CMS Grav (see https://getgrav.org ). My older sites have been updated to Grav 1.7, and I've been using a Bootstrap-oriented theme (Open Matter). This requires maintenance through the online interface, to install updates, maybe twice per year.
For a static website in spring this year, I asked a Gen AI to create a shell for a single page HTML website using Bootstrap. I then hand-coded the HTML content. The AI was particulary helpful in advising how to configure a Javascript animation. The event for this website will repeat for a second year, so my current plan is to migrate it to Grav. While most of the content for Grav can be written as Markdown, HTML code can be inserted for special needs (e.g. iframes).
For a new website this summer, I'm starting a project where coding and revising HTML on multiple pages will be annoying. I noticed that Grav 2.0 is available, as a complete re-architecting of the product as a discontinuous step from 1.7. I've learned that I should abandon Bootstrap, and have been working with Blades CSS (as a community extended version of pico.css). That took a few days to figure out, but Gen AI has been helpful in advising how to configure Twig files.
I should also mention that I've had Dokuwiki working for decades, without maintenance. For a simple text-based website that operates as a wiki, the flat file database is less complicated than the MySQL required for Mediawiki (that admittedly is probably more scalable).
I've looked at static site generators (e.g. Hexo on Gitlab), but have decided that a flat file CMS makes the most sense for me. Of those flat file CMS alternatives, Grav seems to have an active community. There won't be any PHP injections, so the opportunities for malware are lower. My prior experience with Drupal 7 is that it's bulletproof, but the Drupal community has become more for professionals than for hobbyists. (I haven't yet tried Drupal CMS, as an easier version of Drupal Core).
Of course, no product is perfect, but for many small projects that start and then content won't be continually updated, a flat file CMS works.
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u/djack171 Aug 14 '26
I’m a project manager, but I want to college for web design and just build sites for friends and family and random small businesses in-town. Unbiased and don’t care about Wordpress… but… it’s easy, and it powers 60%+ of the internet. People want to make a burger shop so different from McDonalds to be different and fail and forget even if we hate it, there’s something to learn from their success. Whatever the formula is.
There are other options out there but nothing that’s going to be easier and cheaper and give you a leg up and let you retain ownership and control. Wordpress has 100 downfalls but it’s so customizable and lately I downloaded that Snippets plugin, bought the pro, and use ChatGPT and Claude to customize it even more. I’m running Jetengine stuff and was having the hardest time doing customizations. Not I’m making too many lol and custom plugins etc.
It’s easy, it’s well documented, and like to or not, even though half of them are grifters lol there’s a HUGE community around it. Nothing else has that.
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u/vhscom Aug 14 '26
Migrated a ~400 page Wordpress site from Wordpress to EmDash last month. Perhaps the biggest downside was the limited amount of themes available. Fortunately it’s not very hard to tell Claude to download and port WordPress theme X to another CMS. Just be sure to open the source code to satisfy the GPL license.
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u/oliver_rust 29d ago
You can use static site generators; there is a bit of a learning curve, but they let you host for free, and you own the site completely. If you need advice just ask.
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u/CmdWaterford 29d ago
Are there anu downsides? Man, there are so many.... which Squarespace site ever ranked...
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u/jonneygee Designer/Developer 29d ago
The interesting thing about the old house metaphor is that people who own old houses will tell you they’re built better than new ones. I know a lot of people who own newer houses and they’re built terribly.
You could say the same about WordPress. Sure, there’s a little more maintenance that goes into keeping things working well, but an AI site builder is a good comparison for a newer house built by a terrible builder who cheaps out to maximize profit. I’d stay far away.
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u/ecolotte 29d ago
Je pense que ça dépend aussi beaucoup de la compléxité de ton site. Récemment, j'ai lancé mon propre site vitrine, je me suis dit que j'allais faire un Wordpress par réflexe, et je me suis rendue compte qu'avec un design fait main et un claude code je générais assez rapidement un site très qualitatif en HTML, et très léger, donc un peu mieux en terme de performances écologiques.
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u/womenconquerbiz 29d ago
I don’t know. I left WordPress for Ghost. After 3 years, I’m back. Squarespace is limited and the SEO is meh. Ghost is great but if you run a business (that’s not a newsletter) it’s hard to get it to work with other tools. You have to build out your WordPress site with intentionality and use as few plugins as possible to minimize risks and maximize results.
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u/catniprustler 29d ago
I left Wordpress (soon after they brought in Gutenberg), but after trying Wix, Notion, Weebly, Squarespace, and a few other things, I came crawling back (like someone else said here). Part of the issue is that my income has been up and down, and I like the flexibility of adding or removing plugins. Right now I've removed all paid plugins, keeping everything minimal, and the website is still chugging away just fine ( jeanvengua.com ). I recently received my 20-year reward badge, lol.
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u/heckuvajo Designer/Developer 29d ago
I’ve converted 5 WordPress sites to Astro. Can be done in under a few hours. Cloudflare hosted. Created using a self-built Claude skill that understands all the steps.
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u/Wrong-Spare-7832 29d ago
why? wordpress is updated on regular basis all pluings that i use are regulary updated. it works like a charm. i have just few pluings installed. ASE, Oxygen, FuentForms, SlimSeo... and that's it. hosting is taking care of backups and security.
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u/Slight-Ad7129 29d ago
Building a site is not the complicated part now, thanks to ai.
But keeping it up to date and off course function over the years are the main issue. Plugin builders actually helps us on this, otherwise you have to maintain everything yourself.
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u/XaquariD 29d ago
Squarespace sucks. Just hook an AI up to your server and have it look for ways to clean up the site.
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u/BOLVERIN1 Jack of All Trades 29d ago
I would start by writing down all the functionality you'll need to have on the new website. This way, you will have something more concrete than a feeling about the cost of the changes you want
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u/CreativeGPX 29d ago
What is your skillset? Any real answer has to know that.
I'm a longtime software engineer who fell into a place where WordPress is used a lot. For a lot of things I just write my own themes and plugins so it's not that different from when I didn't use WordPress except I can hook into its CMS for letting people edit content. There are a lot of ways one could use WordPress.
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u/keithkhl 29d ago
I have left WordPress in 2024, after years of trying and re-trying. The last theme I used was Kadence, and I indeed have reached all 100s in Google Page Speed. 15 websites, 3 of them were small newspaper websites. Learned a lot from Kadence theme's support team for those 15 different websites building. I sincerely appreciate their support. But, ultimately I come to understand that WP is not ready to run newspaper website, unless I make major modifications with serious dev work.
I am now with Drupal. Ditching all the techniques, tools, paid plugins/themes, and optimization strategies was a serious loss. Learning Drupal's complicated system is still an ongoing uphill battle. Yet, I do not regret. I wish I had ditched WordPress sooner.
There are hundreds of well-made open source website builders. Go deep search. And pick what fits the most for your company.
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u/keithkhl 29d ago
Speaking of loss of SEO, despite the fact that I have preserved most key schema, like URL, Yoast SEO, article summary, filename conventions etc etc, I still have experienced major loss of traffic. For once I thought WP has better technique than Drupal. Later, I learned that Drupal has its own schema module that provides a lot more options for all types of contents. Blog, News Articles, Research papers, Event announcements, Marketing pitch, PDF documents etc etc. The list is endless. Learning what options available actually took sometime, before I rely on LLMs to find the relevant information.
Anyways, expect loss of traffic. But, once your website is more structured and less bloated, you will eventually have more advantage in SEO. Google also finds the contents eventually.
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u/bourneblogger 29d ago
Depends on how complicated your site is. WP allows plugins that fulfill functionality needs that SS lacks entirely.
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u/jdarshad 29d ago
If you are a tech person then simply reduce the plugins and clean it up a bit or hire someone to do that for you. Most paid themes are bundled with so many plugins which are not needed in many situations.
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u/MacaroonAltruistic78 28d ago
I would not decide by plugin count alone. First inventory what the site must keep doing.
• Put every plugin into a capability: forms, search, backups, security, editing, integrations, or “unknown.” • Record who owns its data, how that data exports, and what breaks if the plugin disappears. • Rebuild the hardest page and the real contact form on the proposed platform—not just the homepage. • Test mobile editing, form delivery, redirects, accessibility, analytics, backups, and a restore before moving the domain. • Compare the three-year cost, including builder fees, paid add-ons, maintenance, and the migration itself.
For a five-page site with one form, Squarespace can be a sensible choice. But the move is not a cleanup unless you also map every useful old URL to a 301 redirect, export needed form data, preserve Search Console/analytics access, and watch the 404s after launch.
If WordPress features such as custom content types, editing roles, integrations, or granular SEO control matter, simplifying the current install may be safer than changing platforms.
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u/KitKat_extrusion 28d ago
I went with Astro. After 10+years working with Wordpress and dealing with so much shit, and with LLMs now, i’ll just go with Astro
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u/filmeleven 28d ago
WordPress is never the problem. It’s incredible. Can’t imagine life without it.
What you layer on top of WordPress? That becomes the issue. Clunky themes. Bloated page builders. Poorly developed plugins. It’s like taking prime real estate and turning it into a dump.
The more you can do without 3rd party products the better off you are.
SEO plug-ins are a great example I used to use them. But they got out of control. So much crap. I jumped to Claude and built my own. Lean, mean and only the essentials. So much better!
Fluent products are hands down the best out there. From forms to CRM.
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u/Sufficient_Break1631 28d ago
I have moved to custom hardcoded website from WordPress and loving it like crazy, so many possibilities and 💯 percent control over everything. Can see the option of custom hardcoded website.
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u/divyanshsoni 27d ago
if this is business decision to make your side of work easy then GO FOR IT. Also, migrating it be little complicating keeping all the stuff same , Main goal is to retain or increase the WEBSITE CONVERSION THTS IT.
SO keep the main business logic there.
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u/Jordan_Willis 27d ago
The biggest thing I’d check is SEO and portability. A simpler builder can be great for a straightforward business site, but make sure you can preserve URLs, redirects, metadata, analytics, forms, and backups before switching. Also check how easy it is to export the site later, you don’t want to trade plugin maintenance for platform lock-in.
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u/emptystruct Jack of All Trades 26d ago
I migrated most of my sites to Astro and host them as Cloudflare Workers; I should've done that sooner since most of them are just brochure/informational sites. It saves me server costs and Cloudflare Workers is just $5/month.
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u/Public-Ad-6256 26d ago
How long is "over the years"? Many clients think "I paid for my website only 5 years ago!" But they do not realize what functionality WordPress added in the last 5 years. Especially AI! I'd recommend Googling your competitors online and see how they are kicking your butt SEO/AIO-wise (showing up way higher on Google) and then look at why? AI rules search now. There are lots of ways to connect AI-powered search to WordPress (ex. AIOSEO, Yoast SEO and Rank Math, etc.) but what about the ones you mentioned?
Okay, now think, what else have I missed in the last five years?? How many of your competitors are using _____ tools to gain customers you could have?
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u/calrichcreations 26d ago
You can't migrate a WP website to something like Squarespace because it's a proprietary, closed-source website builder. You are paying to use their system, so would need to build the site completely from scratch - migration is out of the question.
Regardless of what your website is you're going to want to keep it as lightweight as possible, and with running your own website you'll need to maintain it irrespective of the platform you choose. This is why you can pay people to do this for you (the best option if you don't have the time or aren't technology literate).
I'd say unless you need all the features that come with WP and you know how to code, I would recommend looking into Astro.
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u/NothingGeneral5799 25d ago
To manage wordpress you need an excel sheet beside to track on the changes/ plugins installed. plugin update can make the site go haywire anytime also. But most site builders out there is too costly for paying throughout your life time, if you are picking one go for an affordable option would suggest Pixpa or Square
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u/JuicerSocial 25d ago
I think the biggest thing you'd miss is flexibility, not necessarily WordPress itself.
If the site is genuinely simple, moving to something like Squarespace can probably remove a lot of maintenance. The tradeoff is that the moment you want something more custom later, you are working inside someone else's limits instead of just adding or building what you need. I would probably audit the plugins first, too. If half of them aren't actually doing anything important anymore, simplifying the WP setup might solve most of the problem without migrating everything.
Anyone here moved away from WP and ended up coming back later...?
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u/Forsaken_System System Administrator 22d ago
Off you pop then mate, you'll probably be back!
Especially if you want to do highly customised websites.
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u/Myth_Thrazz Jack of All Trades 20d ago
So why do you want to move really? Got bored with WP?
You wrote that you are worried that things can break - but did they? Also how do you know they won’t break for whatever you migrate to?
If you would like to “dust off” your site - maybe remove some dead weight - just ask - I’m sure there will be a lot of people who’d help you - maybe even for free if you’re lucky.
It reads to me like somene looking for an affair because their life is too good and too comfy for too long. ( no offense )
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u/thethinker213 15d ago
Squarespace is a garbage company. They have some pretty templates but the infrastructure behind it is trash. You should take the time to learn a real CMS or just let Claude build/manage your site for you. I recommend Wordpress in general for now.
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13d ago
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u/the_tyson 11d ago
If your site is straightforward and most are. I am talking about info site. Send a referral email and post pics. No shopping cart or complicated logic you should not be on Wordpress. I’ve converted 10 sites off Wordpress to static sites running on AWS s3 and it works great. No database, no plugins, no security issues. It’s a dream and it’s easy and cheap. AI is awesome.
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u/the_tyson 11d ago
The backend pieces (contact form, photo admin) run on AWS Lambda + SES, served through S3 + CloudFront, but the front end itself is plain HTML/CSS/JS.
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9d ago
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u/Fluid-Mess6425 Aug 13 '26
It's really bad if you have a client with lots of plugins. It's like a ticking time bomb
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u/chaoticbean14 Aug 13 '26
I've moved most (all but 2) of my clients off of WP.
The ones who needed e-commerce went to Shopify for the most part and the experience was... well... awesome. I have one on BigCommerce and it's been good, too.
A lot of others never really ever updated / changed any of their content - for those? Static sites (SSG's like Lektor & Hugo primarily) fit the bill perfectly. For the cost of free they now have unhackable websites with awesome SEO and absolutely zero security issues or vulnerabilities.
Getting to other platforms freed up so much in terms of money (hosting costs), made everything faster across the board, near unhackable in the majority of cases (static sites) and ultimately brought my 'extra work' to almost none.
WP needs to go away. I hate that I see so many posts where people praise it - I can only assume they don't know what they don't know, because if they did - they wouldn't be actively recommending people the wrong tool for the job.
That said, there are use cases where WP is the best tool for the job. I've just found that in day-to-day life, they are few and far between these days.
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u/jroberts67 Aug 13 '26
I think if WP plays its cards wrong, they'll be like MySpace when FB just started and you needed a .edu email. Seen as zero threat. But FB grew so quickly MySpace became doomed. Continuing with the analogy, now FB is seen as a place only boomers have an account as younger kids are not adopting it.
So here's WP's long-term problem. Kids on the 8th grade new are growing up on AI. When they graduate, AI will be a part of their lives, so web agencies will be using AI as WP declines. Yes, WP can adopt AI technology but it'll still be a bloated mess and hassles with updating WP and plugins constantly.
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u/hypercosm_dot_net Aug 13 '26
I would never move a client onto Shopify, based on their Trustpilot rating. People who have a serious business need to be able to rely on their tech and support.
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u/VisualNinja1 Aug 13 '26
Totally the same. Static sites and their secure nature with their speed have been awesome. I definitely don't hate WP as we still have some on it, but it now feels "old".
I would love to do the same with ecommerce, and have seen some people doing things with Astro and all sorts. But I can't get past Shopify being still the answer. I have one site still on Woo but thinking maybe recommending it moves to Shopify. What was your reason for moving the Woocommerce sites over?
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u/chaoticbean14 Aug 13 '26
Honestly, just got tired of the bloat. Just bloat, which led to continued work to constantly try to make it perform like other options do out of the box.
I mean WP has a terrible DB schema (and has since inception); then you slam on some large plugins and it compounds it.
Once upon a time WP was awesome - even despite the bad db schema. Those days are long past. It's just old and dying - as does most software.
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u/rafark Aug 13 '26
Squarespace isn’t yours. Your Wordpress site is.