What’s Wrong with WordPress?

You know I’m a big fan of WordPress. For nearly 5 years, I’ve considered it the only online publishing platform worth considering.

I’ve built a number of plug-ins for it over the years(WP-iPodcatter, WP-iCal, WP-GotLucky, and WP-CaTT) of which I only use WP-iCal these days.

Since then, WordPress has taken off.

While they still have the 5-minute install, I feel much of the simplicity of the project has been lost.

While huge efforts have been made to make the admin side more usable and approachable, I’ve been having more and more technical issues with each successive upgrade.

Here’s a handful that come to mind immediately:

• Auto-upgrading FirstCrackPodcast.com to WordPress 2.8 wiped out all 10 of my domains on that server (including my kids photoblog – the Grandparents are not pleased).
• Even before then, auto-calculating the enclosure data on the podcast has been hit and miss for me (more miss when post is initially saved as a draft).
• I’m not clear on the difference between Categories and Tags, and I prefer Categories. WordPress.org seems to prefer Tags.
• No non-RSS/Atom outbound feeds (e.g. iCal, KML, JSON, etc) without use of plugins.
• XML-RPC payload data is unreliable for me (again, Grandparents are not pleased).
• Theme injection spam attacks regularly hiding links in my sites.
• An increasing percentage of the WordPress community that seems just this side of spammers.
• My WordPress URL Shortening Hack suddenly stopped working.

Now, I’ve no interest in migrating 5+ years of data – across countless installs – out of WordPress. Nor do I see another online publishing project as focused on simplicity, flexibility, and extensibility.

I also have no interest taking my chances on another destructive upgrade.

So, I’m experimenting with some ideas, and so far, I’m feeling optimistic.