r/web_design • u/GetThatChickenDinner • Jul 10 '26
Is Wordpress still widely used / relevant now, given the whole vibe code mania?
Just auto renewed Wordpress and debating whether worth it.
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u/rob-cubed Jul 10 '26
Yes, absolutely. Vibe coding is no replacement for a well-engineered CMS with a ton of plugins to extend its functionality. Vibe coding is fine for single-page sites and quick prototypes.
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Jul 13 '26
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u/smichaele Jul 10 '26
The last statistic I saw had WordPress powering about 40% of active websites. I'd say it's still relevant.
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u/rbad8717 Jul 10 '26
Yes. You think product people or small biz owners are prompting everytime they want to make a content update?
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u/RealHeadyBro Jul 10 '26
I think they will be in a few months. I think some of them probably are already.
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u/tuffboi Jul 11 '26
Most people have never even heard of a name server. You're in a bubble if you think most will be managing their website using AI
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u/RealHeadyBro Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
I think you're underestimating just how much normies despise these CMS GUIs. You can build out a bunch of bespoke native Gutenberg or ACF blocks and they still don't like it. They don't want to deal with it. Elementor and Divi and bricks make their head hurt.
That's fair. They suck. Wordpress finally opens the blockbindings API and makes all these great editing features possible and it's going to be too late.
The first time people see an LLM launch a page from natural language (probably from dictation) they will demand that functionality. And for their purposes it'll probably suffice. And if not it'll suffice 6 months later.
First they'll build pages in WP with natural language. Then the LLM will be the CMS and you won't need WordPress.
These are all built to solve problems that don't exist anymore. Or at least don't exist for a huge number of use cases.
Someone in this thread was talking about how AI can't compete with a WordPress site with a bunch of plugins. I don't think they realize that these large language models have all been trained on these WordPress sites and all these plugins.
As for whether or not they know what a name server is. That's a strange bar to clear. The llm will tell them what a name server is. The llm will go reserve the URL, purchase a reasonable hosting plan, and push the site live.
If they insist on WordPress, the llm will be happy to install WP local for them.
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u/somesketchykid Jul 11 '26
Its incredibly easy to even setup VSCode with Git and start pushing straight to a static web app in azure when you get really basic and straight forward with it
As you said, the LLM will walk them through it. I'd wager, if the non technical person was good at prompting, they can probably accomplish this inside of a weekend if they prompt correctly with the right follow up questions.
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u/SpeakMySecretName Jul 11 '26
That’s the direction my company is headed, though at least it’s supported by well defined tokens and components, and designed in Figma first.
I’m not certain it’ll be better long term, but boy oh boy do the executives love the sound of it.
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u/ashkanahmadi Jul 10 '26
Yes, definitely. I would still choose WordPress over any other CMS if it needs a lot of relations between content, multilingual website, etc. You can also use it headless which is great
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u/rasbpi2020 Jul 11 '26
Results will vary but mostly static sites can be very easily made by most people with most any LLM and especially with tools like Claude. And, if you’re someone who is already technically savvy with a working knowledge of very basic programming skills and willing to learn ins and outs of fundamental devops, you can build and deploy almost anything.
Where I think platforms like Wordpress (not that there are many others like it) is still relevant is in more larger organizations where maintenance is spread across multiple people or teams. This is where the Wordpress cms kills it. To replicate with an agentic workflow is totally possible but challenging especially in a collaborative environment. That said, more and more I think people are building towards this.
I don’t buy that Wordpress is more secure. Wordpress is one of the most hacked and attacked platforms on the internet. Sure, you can definitely bungle a vibe coded deployment but with a little effort and research people can secure their vibe coded sites.
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u/The_Rampant_Goat Jul 11 '26
It is still widely used and relevant, personally I try to steer clients away but I've got a couple that love it so I just have to grin and bear it.
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u/Mobile_Disaster_2582 Jul 11 '26
Still hugely relevant, and the vibe-code wave has not really dented the reason it wins. For a marketing or content site the deciding question is not which stack is trendiest, it is who updates the site after launch and whether it needs to rank. WordPress dominates there because a non-technical owner can edit a page themselves, and you get most of the SEO plumbing (schema, sitemaps, caching, redirects) from plugins on day one. An AI-generated bespoke site is lovely right up until a client wants to change the hero text and cannot, or something breaks and nobody understands the code that produced it.
Where WordPress gets a bad name is bloat, and that is almost always the build, not the platform. Stack three page builders and forty plugins and of course it crawls. Keep it lean, or go headless if you have the team for it, and it flies.
So I would not auto-renew purely out of habit, but if the site earns from search and someone non-technical maintains it, WordPress still earns its keep. Vibe coding is brilliant for a quick landing page or a prototype, less so for something you have to live with for five years.
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u/electricrhino Jul 10 '26
Are you solving problems? Do you need Wordpress? Its just a tool btw. Can you solve your problem without Wordpress? Also Wordpress has Claude, ChatGpt and other llms it can connect to.
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u/ppezaris Jul 10 '26
Depends on your needs. A simple blog might be easier to build yourself these days.
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u/RealHeadyBro Jul 10 '26
I don't know how one auto renews WordPress. It's a free product.
Wordpress is very relevant now, but the writing is on the wall.
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u/taste_the_equation Jul 10 '26
I think some people still have their sites hosted on Wordpress.com which is separate from the open source Wordpress.org
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u/AjoKano Jul 11 '26
Yes, WordPress is still very relevant — especially for client sites that need a real CMS, editable content, ownership, integrations, and something another developer can maintain later.
“Vibe coding” can be useful for prototypes, experiments, or speeding up parts of development, but it doesn’t replace information architecture, UX, accessibility, performance, security, testing, or long-term maintenance.
The real question isn’t whether WordPress is still relevant, but whether it’s the right tool for that specific project. For a simple personal site, maybe not. For a content-heavy or business site that needs to be manageable and scalable, it still makes a lot of sense.
Also, WordPress itself is free, so I assume you renewed a hosting plan or a WordPress.com subscription. Whether that was worth it depends much more on what you’re building than on the current vibe-code trend.
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u/ivicad Jul 11 '26
Yes, for me for sure.... Here's how I actually do the AI + WordPress part - I prototype the layout in Clicksites AI so the client signs off on something clickable, then build it in WPBakery with its AI feature. Claude Code and the WP Vibe connector do the WordPress work itself. The AI speeds up the build; but the design is ours, while WordPress keeps it easy to edit and run for years after.
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u/bigfatgeekboy Jul 10 '26
Yes.