Bad development practices
WordPress’ ease of installation and customisation makes it ideal for entry level developers to build and publish websites; however, when there are specific needs that cannot be achieved in the chosen theme or the plugins available, this can become an issue. Inexperienced developers might code a workaround which could potentially impact other functionality or try a solution which is too restrictive to work long term. More experienced developers also have more knowledge on where to push back or provide a better solution that achieves the same goals.
Purpose
As a summary to some of the previous issues mentioned with WordPress is that within the realms of modern practices, it simply isn't fit for purpose in the modern world - despite the good that it has done, without having to throw more and more plugins into the website, it's simply not fit for purpose any more. The greatest comparison is the aforementioned Ford Model T. The Model T became the benchmark for how cars should operate (insert statistic), it was great for its time, but better alternatives were created from the ground-up which eventually led to the Model T’s ultimate out-phasing.
Cookie cutter
Having nearly 15 years (as of March 2024) experience with web development, it's safe to assume that I have seen a lot of websites in my time to the point where I can mostly tell a website is built on WordPress the first time I view it. Big hero banner, some blocks with generic hover effects and a shit-ton of bottom to top scroll reveal - impressive to clients, sure; and I can't complain about the uniformity in user experience, however it hinders companies trying to stand out from the noise.
That being said, I must admit that there are some not terrible WordPress websites out there when they have been custom themed, and custom themed well. The main problem is that the cheapest route is to simply pick a pre-built theme and change a few colours - which is fine, but for whatever reason each pre-bought out the box WordPress theme is no different from the next - which I personally find overused and as soon as I know the website is WordPress based, I’m already hesitant to engage for all the reasons listed in this section - If I know a website is WordPress based, I loved credibility for that company. The main caveat though is because I'm a developer and so I see things differently and this is purely my opinion.
Monolithic
What is a monolithic system? Simply put, it means that navigating between pages on a website renders the same styling, JavaScript and layout code every time - yes there's caching, but there's still a heavy workload by the server to do this for each visitor on every page. In itself, that's not a massive issue, however as the rise in popularity and benefits of headless infrastructure becomes more prevalent, WordPress as it currently stands may very quickly be left behind.
The other aspect of WordPress is that it is still jQuery based - I don't expect this to mean anything to non-developers, however, much like WordPress as a whole, jQuery revolutionised what was possible through JavaScript without being an expert - it was so good it practically killed off Flash as a means for animation and quick UI (think accordions etc) in websites. jQuery was a game-changer, but that has since been surpassed by JavaScript based html control through frameworks such as VueJS and React - which now have even more powerful ones built from it such as NuxtJS. Having personally witnessed the transition from working with Flash to jQuery and then to Vue, it's simply a change that needs to happen.
Antiquated but still going
Despite all the reasons why WordPress might no longer be the go-to solution for website platforms, the hard truth is that it isn't going anywhere just yet. Yes, there are even cheaper options nowadays such as Wix and Squarespace, but the flexibility and ease still makes WordPress attractive to low budget clients and less experienced developers. Newer platforms have gained traction and perhaps one day - much like Flash back in the day, WordPress will no longer blight the internet.
