WP Perspectives Issue 29: A Perfect Storm and the Strength of the WordPress Platform

In this issue I reflect on the perfect storm we are experiencing, what’s in play, and what is still solid.

We Have Seen the Signs But Have We Put the Pieces Together

The WordPress ecosystem is in the middle of a perfect storm. Visit almost any WordPress discussion group and you’ll see posts like “Don’t you get it, WordPress is toast!” I’ve seen senior agency leaders advising each other to pitch their work as “solutions” and to avoid mentioning “WordPress” at all. Market share numbers are slipping. New tutorials are all about AI. Plugin and theme shops report that sales are down.

In this issue of the WP Perspectives Newsletter, I want to unpack what’s actually going on, why it feels so intense right now, and where to look for stability and opportunity on the other side of the storm.

Charting the Perfect Storm

A “perfect storm” is a situation where several individual factors, each serious on its own, collide at the same time and magnify each other. None of these forces alone would have created today’s level of turmoil. Together, they’ve shaken confidence in the WordPress business ecosystem.

Let’s look at what has changed over the last few years.

Matt and WP Engine: Governance in the Spotlight

The dispute between Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine turned a long-running governance concern into a very public crisis. Matt argued that WP Engine was profiting from WordPress without contributing enough back, while WP Engine sued Automattic and Matt, alleging abuse of power, extortion, interference, and damage to its business. For many, the flashpoint wasn’t just the lawsuit, but the use of WordPress.org infrastructure as leverage. Automattic and Matt temporarily blocked WP Engine’s access to WordPress.org resources. A court later ordered access restored, including control of the Advanced Custom Fields plugin listing.

That sequence forced people to reconsider a basic assumption: that WordPress.org, the theme and plugin repositories, update systems, and communication channels were “community resources” held by a neutral foundation. The episode made it clear that these key assets are ultimately under the control of one person and one company, and can be used accordingly. The result is that some established WordPress businesses have started exploring other platforms, such as Shopify. Many long‑time developers and supporters have stepped back from active involvement in the project or reduced their investment in the ecosystem.

The Collapse of SEO as a Growth Engine

For years, WordPress was the golden child of SEO. It delivered clean URLs, easy content management, taxonomies, metadata, permalinks, built‑in blogging, plugins, sitemaps, schema, and an entire ecosystem focused on ranking in Google. If you wanted to publish quickly, optimize pages, and rank in search, WordPress was the obvious choice.

That edge came from the old search model. Google rewarded crawlable pages, keyword targeting, internal links, structured content, backlinks, and SEO best practices. WordPress made those playbooks accessible to almost everyone. A small business, blogger, agency, or affiliate publisher could install an SEO plugin, write focused content, and realistically compete.

AI‑driven search has changed the rules. Search engines are no longer simply returning a list of blue links. They are summarizing answers, extracting information, blending multiple sources, and satisfying intent directly in the search interface. The traditional WordPress SEO model of “publish optimized content and wait for traffic” is breaking down, because AI systems can consume that content without necessarily sending visitors back to the site. As a result, SEO is no longer the reliable, compounding growth engine for many WordPress‑based businesses that it once was.

Build vs Buy in an AI World

AI has also reshaped the WordPress professional’s toolbox by making custom plugin development more approachable. A WordPress pro can now use AI to generate simple plugins, explain unfamiliar APIs, debug errors, and quickly iterate. This doesn’t instantly turn every site builder into a plugin developer, but it does put simpler plugins, workflow utilities, and client‑specific features within much easier reach.

That changes the traditional build‑versus‑buy calculation. In the past, buying a plugin was usually the only sensible option because building one required too much time, risk, and specialized programming knowledge. Now, if a needed feature is well‑defined and not too complex, building a lightweight custom plugin has become realistic. This shift puts pressure on both new and established plugin businesses. New plugin makers may struggle to sell simple tools when experienced users can recreate the features with AI assistance. Established companies may find that customers are less willing to tolerate price increases, lock‑in, or subscriptions for functionality that feels easy to reproduce.

For WordPress professionals, AI enables a new middle path between buying a premium plugin and coding everything from scratch. It is harder to get traction in the low end of the plugin market, while demand increases for plugins that are genuinely hard to replace and deliver real, ongoing value.

AI‑Generated Sites and Vanishing Brochure Projects

AI website tools have lowered the floor for brochure sites, landing pages, and small‑business websites. What once required a freelancer to install themes, plugins, and simple copywriting, can now be produced as a decent first draft using AI assistants. For many small businesses, “good enough” has become easier and cheaper to reach.

This erodes the low end of the agency and freelancer market. Projects that once justified a few thousand dollars are pushed into DIY tools, templates, or budget AI‑assisted packages. Clients may show up with a partially generated site and ask a developer to finish it, shrinking project scope and margins.

The most exposed providers are those focused on standard pages, common plugins, and light theme customization. AI does not replace higher‑value skills like conversion optimization, integrations, accessibility, performance, analytics, or long‑term maintenance. But it does make basic brochure‑style work feel faster, cheaper, and more disposable.

AI and Site Security: A Bigger Attack Surface

Plugin security vulnerabilities have always been an Achilles’ heel for WordPress. The platform’s strength, millions of sites powered by thousands of plugins, is also its largest attack surface. WordPress core can be relatively well maintained, but many sites depend on third‑party plugins created by developers with widely varying security practices, update schedules, and support resources. A single vulnerable plugin can expose thousands of sites at once.

AI makes this problem more urgent. It lowers the effort required to discover, analyze, and exploit weak code. Attackers can use AI‑assisted tools to scan plugin code, identify unsafe patterns, generate proof‑of‑concept exploits, and automate attacks across large numbers of sites. This raises the security burden around plugins. Sites without disciplined maintenance, careful plugin selection, and proactive security monitoring will become even easier targets.

Global Disruption and Economic Uncertainty

Global events are also creating a more unstable environment for nearly every digital business. Geopolitical conflicts, energy shocks, trade uncertainty, inflation, supply chain disruption, and tighter customer budgets all contribute to caution and delayed decision‑making. The World Bank has described the global economy as entering “another period of heightened stress,” driven by geopolitical tensions, policy uncertainty, the rapid adoption of AI, oil price pressure, inflation, and supply chain issues.

This matters for WordPress because WordPress is not a product from a single country or a single company. It is a global ecosystem of hosts, plugin and theme businesses, agencies, freelancers, SaaS integrations, contributors, educators, and small businesses. When economic uncertainty rises, clients delay redesigns, trim budgets, question subscriptions, consolidate tools, and scrutinize every expense. Hosting upgrades, plugin renewals, and agency retainers all come under pressure at once.

The Impact: A Recalibrating Economy

It’s tempting to point to one villain as the cause of all this turmoil: “It’s Matt’s fault,” “It’s AI,” “It’s Google,” and so on. In reality, we’re living through a collision of forces. The impact is very real, though, and it shows up in two big ways:

First, uncertainty is pervasive. Sellers, service providers, and customers all feel more cautious and less confident about long‑term investments. Second, the business of WordPress is in a state of rapid change. The WordPress “apocalypse” that people talk about is not a platform dying. It’s an economy adjusting to a new reality.

Every force described above such as the governance shock, the SEO collapse, AI‑assisted development, cheaper brochure sites, and tighter budgets, they are primarily disrupting the business layer built on top of WordPress, not WordPress core itself. The problem is that a huge ecosystem of freelancers, agencies, plugin shops, and hosting companies built business models around conditions that no longer exist.

Weathering the Storm

The first step is to separate the health of WordPress core from the turbulence of the WordPress economy. The business layer of hosts, agencies, freelancers, plugin shops, and service providers, it is under real stress. But core itself has continued to improve, release after release. That distinction matters, because it points to where the solid ground really is.

There are two ways to think about WordPress.

Some people treat WordPress as a solution. A blogger, small business, or creator can use core, plus a theme and a few well‑chosen plugins, to launch the site they need. Freelancers and agencies who specialize in quick brochure sites are largely operating in this mode: WordPress as an all‑in‑one toolkit for common problems.

Others see WordPress primarily as a platform to build on. This is where the strengths of open source and the GPL really shine through. Power users and developers are free to take WordPress in any direction they choose. The platform’s extensibility of hooks and filters, the template hierarchy, dynamic data, custom post types, and thousands of plugins and themes, these make it a flexible foundation for more ambitious and specialized projects.

That platform story is still getting stronger. The tools for building on top of WordPress continue to evolve. We have new page builders, SEO tools, backup and security solutions, Gutenberg extensions, and more. Contributions are coming from many directions, and we’re in the middle of what feels like a contributor renaissance. The AI features introduced with WordPress 7.0 are another example of that flexibility. They show that WordPress can adapt and integrate new technologies quickly and give site builders a practical way to use AI in their workflows.

Storms are real. They can be frightening and destructive. But they don’t eliminate everything; they reveal what was already fragile and clear away what can’t withstand pressure. The work now is to move away from brittle business models that depended on yesterday’s conditions and toward the parts of the WordPress ecosystem that will still matter when the skies clear: durable products, real expertise, long‑term relationships, and a platform that keeps quietly getting better.

Recently Published

• First Look at Unblock: A New Gutenberg-Based Builder for WordPress – A new Gutenberg-based builder from the developer of WP Grid Builder. This looks to be interesting.
• WPMet TableKit Pro Mini Review – A new table plugin from WPMet.
• Microbite Image Converter for WordPress – I used Microbite when doing the maintenance on WebTNG. It was helpful in shrinking the size of the media library.
• Media Library and Large Images – Beware the Defaults – There is not a lot of good information about managing the media library. This is an update of an article from a few years ago with current thinking.
• Mosaic Builder Walkthrough and Review – Mosaic is new, but looks to be a builder that is easy to use and has advanced features.
• Creating ACF Blocks with Novamira and Claude Code – There are a lot of AI options for WordPress, but Novamira is top of the list.
• The Off Switch Bloat Removal Plugin for WordPress – A mini review of yet another toggle collection of features / disabling default core options plugin.

From Around the Web

• Ten Data-Backed Truths Of User Experience ROI – This article by Carrie Webster has a number of UX points that may give you ideas when building a site.
• Interview with Andy Bell and Nathan Wrigley – A very nice interview with one of the icons of modern CSS.
• We’re Making a Bet – Established plugin companies are trying strategies during a downturn in plugin sales.

Best Deals?

• Builderius is on a 10 day sale before package and pricing changes.
• Mosaic is at a low price for the LTD and annual packages are currently free to try.

What’s Up Next

I’m waiting for the upcoming release of Mosaic, where they plan to update the way classes show on the front-end.

I’ve been figuring out how to deal with the two CSS style systems in Oxygen 6. I’m pretty close.

I interviewed the Builderius team and have an article in the works. Nice guys with a good vision.

Thank you for reading. I’d like to hear what you have to say about the newsletter content and what you are excited about. Feel free to comment or send me an email through the contact form.