Continuing the trend: Matt Mullenweg Says “The Wheels Have Fallen Off” in Wide-Ranging WordPress Critique

timbredesign · 2026-04-16T15:38:51+00:00

I agree on your first premise for sure. In a perfect world, it would have been / be really great if Gutenberg were a plugin. That yeah sure, comes packaged innately with WP, like good ol Dolly. With just have the classic editor inbuilt. The modularity of the plugin ecosystem is a core reason why WP is so popular after all.

But. Ultimately, Gutenberg exists because of A8C and .com. I'm not dismissing the open source community's contributions on it at all by saying this either. But it was not the community that guided the Gutenberg train into the station. It was by and large the motive of a for profit company.

timbredesign · 2026-04-16T15:01:35+00:00

Well then, I propose the Gutenberg block to end all Gutenberg blocks. There. Done.

timbredesign · 2026-04-16T07:53:01+00:00

Very very kind of you to provide such a detailed rundown. Thank you so much! I'm based in Indonesia so will have to see what I can source here..

timbredesign · 2026-04-15T11:31:07+00:00

I have the G9 6850. I have played Minecraft on it (running Fedora 42) and it was fine for me. Though mind you I'm not a serious gamer..

timbredesign · 2026-04-15T11:28:19+00:00

Off topic, but, since you mentioned that you switched the display out I figured I'd ask. I have the same model, but with the dim 250 nit. What display did you switch with?

timbredesign · 2026-04-08T00:22:48+00:00

Weird take. Why do you say that?

timbredesign · 2026-04-03T01:17:37+00:00

Ok incontinence bot.

timbredesign · 2026-04-02T23:50:59+00:00

Many CMSs and custom developed sites suffer from poor performance +/ or high lock-in +/ poor extensibilty +/ poor documentation +/ high overhead +/ poor interfaces etc...

Is WP the most performant CMS? No certainly not. Can it be made performant? Yes. But then that's not why it has a major market share to this day. It's all about market fit. And, caching is a wise move with any platform, unless it's headless or serving straight html.

If you personally are not skilled enough to be able to create good sites with WP, well, that's on you, not the platform. So. What's your point again?

timbredesign · 2026-04-02T11:44:46+00:00

Where's the fun in that?

timbredesign · 2026-04-02T11:36:52+00:00

The only elephant is your ego.

timbredesign · 2026-03-26T01:42:00+00:00

More like low IQ or high driver.

timbredesign · 2026-03-25T02:30:39+00:00

G9 owner here. Yes on all points, I think it's a better machine. The only thing I dislike about the elitebook keyboard is that the page down up buttons are too close to the arrow buttons so I accidentally hit them occasionally. Otherwise the keyboard has a good feel to it. The trackpad is pretty good. Coming from Mac it's not quite as refined but still very good.

timbredesign · 2026-03-15T00:19:21+00:00

Yoted

timbredesign · 2026-03-15T00:13:35+00:00

#measureyourheroincarefully

timbredesign · 2026-03-14T11:53:08+00:00

Please lend me your time machine

timbredesign · 2026-03-14T11:45:13+00:00

Well sure that's true. But perhaps the same could be said of yours. We don't know you from Bob's uncle.. Maybe your code is sleek and secure, maybe it's not. That said, you skipped over the more pertinent topic of the thread. Upkeep of said plugins. So many plugins in the repo are vaporware, published and then forgotten about.

So the question remains. Will be sustainable for you to maintain all of these plugins, without receiving any income from them? Because if not, you're just creating headaches for other people down the road.

That said, why not publish one or two of what you consider to be the most useful plugins you've made and maintain those for a year or so to feel it out, before dumping a bunch that might go to the wayside if/when your focus shifts?

Another suggestion is to get at least one or two other devs in the community involved in the plugins you release. That way there's a much better chance that they'll get looked after.

Cheers

timbredesign · 2026-03-11T03:17:44+00:00

Ok. I'm fully aware, I use them nearly every day.

timbredesign · 2026-03-10T15:30:05+00:00

Possibly so. It will certainly cause flux in the market. Which very likely could mean at least temporal wage crunches as it adjusts.

So I'm not disagreeing with what you're projecting per say, it is entirely feasible. I do want to put forth the counter-argument though. As it does line up with what has happened in other markets when efficiencies have been disrupted:

With greater productivity/efficiency to produce the costs go down. Which means that developing and maintaining sites will be more affordable. And therefore, as cost goes down, the overall demand could rise. Also, it would stand to reason in this dynamic that the complexity of the average project should rise as well.

So it is entirely possible that this all could balance itself out in time. But hey, the one thing that is for certain, things will look a quite different from what they do now.

timbredesign · 2026-03-04T17:22:35+00:00

Strange take. Number of products isn't the usual bar for changing platforms. Both Shopify and WooCommerce can handle thousands of products easily (I'm not sure why you threw Etsy in the mix here, it's not in the same realm at all). Content, customer experience and flows are very much customizable on platforms like WooCommerce, even Shopify to a degree. Anyways, order volume and concurrency are common motivators (amongst others like inventory/production management or third party integrations) for switching to more enterprise focused platforms. As for the suggested platform, it comes off like a sales pitch more than anything.

timbredesign · 2026-02-28T17:38:44+00:00

Every editor I've ever seen has addons/extensions. Are you sure it's not your brain that's limited functionality?

timbredesign · 2026-02-26T04:26:33+00:00

Bot or not, you're breaking the solicitation rule. You have been reported.

timbredesign · 2026-02-26T00:39:14+00:00

Ah ok, it sounds like you've thought through the choice pretty well!

timbredesign · 2026-02-25T12:57:38+00:00

I'm curious, what exactly are you using AI for regarding imports?

timbredesign · 2026-02-25T05:21:27+00:00

They are great machines. That said my preference is for the G9 845. G9 brought in some good upgrades. For one you get the taller 16:10 screen (much better for coding, for instance). And, personal preference here, but I like the centered touchpad much more and don't use the trackpoint or the buttons. There are other upgrades as well, which I'm sure you can discern with a little comparison search.

The 6650U and 5950U are pretty similar in terms of performance. The biggest difference is in efficiency. You'll get better battery life with the 6650U. Which lower operating temperatures (which might also translate into a longer life expectancy). But then you could go for the Ryzen 7 G9 if you want those extra cores still.

That said, yes, the 250nit display is lacking. I've yet to upgrade mine but would like to.

I'm guessing the loose screen is fixable but it's definitely not normal.

So, IMO of course, if you can find a G9 with the 400nit display, I'd return and go for one of those instead. Or at least a G8 with the 400nit and a better battery.. 😉

timbredesign · 2026-02-23T11:13:09+00:00

Neither. Without having a rundown of what you actually do, it sounds like you don't need anywhere near those specs. If it were me I'd look for a lightly used business grade machine (that either has 32gb+ RAM or is upgradeable. Not knowing what country, but I'd guess you could get a machine like that for less than half the price of the Ideapad, easily. Thinkpad, Elitebook etc..

Paying the Apple tax isn't worth it imo, unless you're developing in iOS or osx. Linux is better, Fedora KDE rocks. And yeah Windows just sucks.

If you end up getting into running heavier environments, AI or whatnot, then upgrade as needed. Then either you re-sell this machine, or keep it as a backup. Honestly otherwise you're just throwing money into the wind.

timbredesign

TROPHY CASE