What are you doing, WordPress.com?

Re:What are you doing, WordPress.com? by skilled on Sunday April 03, 2022 @08:59AM (#30896522)

Yes, it just hit me as to why you misunderstood me.

I think because WordPress.org is heading into a direction of being a website builder itself, it will naturally hurt developers/businesses who make their living off of it.

Yeah, cool and exciting designs might still have a market, but for blogs, magazine sites, portfolios - that ~$50 for a premium theme might be better spent elsewhere.

I don't know if you're familiar with Webflow[0], but it started out as yet another website builder. And, in recent years they have added so many features and layout templates that I once got confused seeing the "Made with Webflow" badge on a landing page. It had all modern features like smooth page transitions, svg animations, cool gallery effects, etc,. You know, the things people pay that $50 for.

If this happens, or rather when it happens, maybe Automattic will have to think hard about what it wants the future to look like.

[0]: https://webflow.com/

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Re:What are you doing, WordPress.com? by unfocussed_mike on Sunday April 03, 2022 @09:16AM (#30896664)

Yeah -- it absolutely is headed in the direction of being a website builder with luxury competition (Squarespace; Wix is no luxury, it's a torture).

And I must say, even though I have developed themes in the past, I'd prefer to see Gutenberg succeed in making most themes irrelevant. Themes that can be customised without PHP entirely seem to me to be a good solution to a lot of people's complaints about the untidy boundary between plugins and themes.

I am only familiar with Webflow from people who say "I've been trying to do this in Webflow but I'd prefer if we could do it in Wordpress".

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