WordPress Sucks Ass. Don't Let it Destroy Your Business.

I got it wrong.

For years I had one line and I used it on everybody. It's not WordPress. It's the plugins.

I said it in print. My name is on it.

Then a hole showed up in WordPress itself. Not a plugin. The thing itself.

The feds put it on a list of holes being used to break into real sites right now. Read it yourself.

I told you the roof was fine and the leak was in the thing bolted on. The leak was in the roof.

TL;DR

WordPress won't kill your business in one afternoon. It does it in three pieces. A bill that grows every year. Plugins that hold your door open. Pages too slow to get read. I've built more than 10,000 sites. I moved 1,387 of my own posts off WordPress. You don't have to leave today. You do have to know which piece is already hitting you.

3 Things to Remember

I Told You It Was the Plugins. I Was Wrong.

I had one line about WordPress and I used it for years.

It's not WordPress. It's the plugins.

It made sense at the time. Most sites I cleaned up got hit through something bolted on. So I kept saying it.

Then the hole turned up in the core software. Not a plugin. The thing itself.

It landed on a federal list of holes being used to break into real sites right now.

I'm not telling that story twice. I already wrote the whole thing up, and it has the details.

That's why I opened with it. I'm not selling you fear. I got one wrong and I'm saying so.

It Doesn't Break All at Once. It Breaks in Three Pieces.

WordPress doesn't take your business down in one bad night. It takes it in three pieces. Not one of them looks like an emergency.

The bill. The break in. The wait.

That's the whole post. Every piece is already proven somewhere else on this site.

The next three sections are those three. I'm not arguing any of them again. Skip to yours.

The Bill. It Costs More Than Anybody Told You.

Your hosting bill is not your website bill.

It's the twenty small things with a renewal date on them. A form tool. A backup tool. A security tool. A booking tool. A theme license.

And a guy who bills you every month. You're not sure what for.

None of them is big. All of them renew. Nobody sends you one bill. So you never see the number. You just feel it.

Go add it up. All of it. Here's the whole breakdown, piece by piece, with the three year total. I already did the math.

Mistake: you count the hosting and call that your website cost.

Fix: add up every charge with a renewal date on it. All of it.

Payoff: you know your real number. Now you can do something with it.

The Break In. Somebody Else's Code Holds Your Front Door.

Most break ins don't come through WordPress. They come through a plugin. Somebody else wrote it. Then they walked away.

You didn't pick those plugins. You picked a website. Somebody handed you fifteen strangers with keys.

A stranger wrote the code. The stranger left. The code still holds a door open.

This is the most covered ground on my blog. Start here if this one is yours. It answers the question everybody asks about updates.

Mistake: you think updates are the whole job.

Fix: count the plugins nobody has touched in over a year.

Payoff: you find out which doors have nobody behind them.

The Wait. Nobody Reads a Site That Won't Load.

A slow site doesn't just lose a ranking. It loses the person.

He tapped your link. He's in a parking lot on his phone. He's not waiting.

And it isn't just people now. AI reads a few pages and quotes them. A heavy page is an easy page to skip.

I've written this one to death. The full argument is here. Speed, weight, and why it's baked in.

The Trap Is Not Being Able to Change Anything.

Here's the one you feel every week.

You can't change your own hours on your own website.

You want to move Saturday to 8am. So you text somebody. Then you wait. Maybe today. Maybe Thursday.

That's not a cost. That's a leash.

This has nothing to do with owning versus renting. I lease sites and I think leasing is fine. It's about whether you can change your own information the day your business changes.

The post that owns this argument is here. Abandoned plugins, updates that break things, and one bad afternoon.

Mistake: you treat "I have to text somebody" as normal.

Fix: time it. Once. Write the number down.

Payoff: you find out if you own a tool or a waiting list.

Find Out Which One Is Already Happening to You.

No tool. No tech guy. Three checks, ten minutes, tonight.

1. Open your last twelve months of card statements. Circle everything that says renew. That's the bill.

2. Open your plugin list. Count how many were last updated over a year ago. That's the break in.

3. Load your own site on your phone, on data, not wifi. Count out loud until you can tap something. That's the wait.

Each check maps to one piece. No vocabulary. No login. No charge.

Whichever number surprised you most is the one already hitting you.

I run a [TYPE OF BUSINESS] in [YOUR CITY] and my website is on WordPress.

Here is every website charge I could find on my last 12 months of card
statements, one per line:
[PASTE YOUR CHARGES]

And here are the plugins running on my site, one per line:
[PASTE YOUR PLUGIN LIST]

Do four things.

1. Add up my real yearly website cost from those charges. Give me one
   number. Then show me the list, biggest to smallest.
2. Tell me which charges renew on their own, so I know what keeps
   happening whether I use it or not.
3. Go through my plugin list. Tell me which ones look abandoned or
   risky, and which ones a custom built site would not need at all.
4. Tell me the one thing on this list I should deal with first, and why.

Rules: write at a 5th grade reading level. Short sentences. No hype.
If you are not sure about something, say you are not sure.

I Moved 1,387 of My Own Posts Off a Stack I Didn't Control.

I didn't write this from the outside. I ran my own business on WordPress.

I got tired of it. So I moved 1,387 of my own posts off it. Mine. Not a client's.

I was sick of waiting on somebody to change my own site. Here's how that move went, including what happened to my rankings.

That's the only credential in this post. I'm not stacking more on it.

I Still Tell Some People to Stay on WordPress.

I do. Regularly.

WordPress runs a huge share of the web. It got there for real reasons. It's cheap to start. You can find somebody who knows it in any town in America. It publishes writing well, and it has for twenty years.

Say you have a small site you barely touch. A few pages. No forms. No bookings. It loads fine on your phone.

Then leave it alone. Go run your business.

I mean that. I'm not setting a trap in the next paragraph.

Here's who that isn't.

It stops being fine the day your site starts doing a job. Taking bookings. Collecting names. Answering for you when you're not in the room.

That's the line. Not the size of the site. The job it does.

You Don't Have to Hate WordPress. You Just Can't Ignore the Bill.

I'm not asking you to hate a piece of software. I don't.

I'm asking you to know which piece is already hitting you. One of them probably is.

What you want isn't a new website. It's not thinking about any of this on a Sunday.

If you want to see your site on something fast that you can change yourself, take a test drive. I'll put your site on my code. You can look at it before you spend anything.

And if you'd rather read how I think about all of it first, that's what Balls Out Marketing is for.

Take a Test Drive →

Want the whole playbook first? Plan your attack. Balls Out Marketing.

FAQ

Read These In This Order

1. WordPress Left Your Site Wide Open. The Feds Noticed.
2. The WordPress Bill Nobody Adds Up
3. 7 Reasons WordPress Sucks for Your Business
4. Stop Being Held Hostage by Your Plugins
5. WordPress Is Dead. AI Killed It.
6. Leave WordPress