8 a.m. Thoughts: Word Press, Security, and Legacy 💭🤔 - DEV Community

Security debates spark in the comments
Word Press was released in the fantastic world of 2003, before 5G, wifi-7, and meta glasses.
I have been seeing Word Press everywhere the last few years. So many highlights of what people are doing with it, so many people wanting it managed. I wondered to myself if Word Press was something I needed to learn to make myself more marketable. Since I have actively avoided it, I wondered what exactly I was missing out on.
A surface level investigation reveals that Word Press is a frequent target for bad guys, ( I refuse to say hacker because I want to remove the stigma that all hacking is bad. ) and you would have to pay special attention to patches, updates, and backups along with app hardening. Ignoring an update leaves you open to bugs or exploits. Complex customizations can make updating risky. Conflicts, bloat, and lack of optimization can slow you down. I don't think I need to continue, there is a lot of uncertainty.
Not sure if I'm interested in joining that party. So, THIS is why I see all of these Word Press jobs available. It all makes sense now. 😂
When I was first starting in web development, I would read all these Word Press memes and general complaints. It gave me a cringe feeling. To make matters worse, it seemed like every other available position was managing Word Press. Come oooooonnn dude. You want me to optimize on top of someone else lack of care? Hmm. No. Hire a developer. We need jobs! Let us build you something far more elegant, custom, and up to date. All we ask for in return is job security, no? 😂😂😂
Word Press may single handedly lead to the rise of the junior developer once again. 🤣 🥳 I’m not going to waste my time learning an over-bloated system with high security risks. I’ve got enough drama in my life. Personally? Knowing what I know now, I would not run the risk of putting my personal ecommerce site on Word Press. The bigger you are and the more you buy into, the more you expose yourself. I'm probably severing any possibility of ever working with Word Press here. Oh wellsies.
It’s better to stay as O.G. and annoyingly granular as possible. It’s more secure. It gives you pride. It gives you control, if you can accept responsibility for yourself and others. That's not to say there isn't use cases for using prebuilt tools and templates, there are. But I digress.
If security is not a valid concern for your use case, like in the case of a static website or recipe archive of some sort, than by all means, Word Press away! I’m sure this is perfect for some applications.
Here is a source of entertaining Word Press memes: https://www.wpfixit.com/wordpress-memes/
From my brief digging this morning, I've learned that Word Press is a fertile land of plugin chaos. 🦄 I will continue building fully functional features on my website from scratch, as I want to keep a thin slice of sanity. Leave it to a developer to complain about Word Press, of course. I guess it was my turn. 🤣
Hire a developer Mr. Fancy Businessman, that Junior developer will take you far further in the way that you prefer than Word Press likely ever could. Especially if you have anything of a unique situation. If the “bad guys” don’t understand your system architecture, you become more of a pain in the *ss to exploit. You bullet proof yourself to a degree. Be annoying and let them go for low hanging fruit elsewhere.
And to my peers: Don’t get overly reliant on AI. Go build a system at home, on a small computer, on a Linux device. Learn how to host it all and make it secure on your own network. Be a powerful developer, make the people that came before you proud. No laziness. If you want a junior role you must outshine the current capabilities of existing systems. That’s going to be a lot of work. Start now. (Or make your own business!)
Now, I am not completely dense. I only have an outsider perspective. What can you tell me about the ins and outs of Word Press land? I challenge you to slant my opinion. I am genuinely curious if for nothing else than entertainment value.
Since you asked to be slanted a bit, here's one. WordPress core has installed minor security releases on its own by default since version 3.7 and since 5.5 you can turn on auto-updates for each plugin. A lot of the scary stories are sites where nobody turned that on, or a dead plugin nobody replaced. A custom site has the same chore, it just shows up as npm or composer updates instead.
Loved the lighthearted tone of the post, but as a developer working in threat modeling and security architecture, I couldn't resist jumping into the debate with a few counterpoints!
1. The "Obscurity" Trap: Assuming custom code is safer because "bad guys don't know your architecture" is a classic security anti-pattern (Security through Obscurity). Kerckhoffs's principle and Claude Shannon reminded us long ago: "the enemy knows the system." Automated bots and scanners don't care what your stack is; they hunt for unvalidated inputs, broken auth logic, XSS, and SQLi regardless.
2. The Reality of Custom Code: In 2026, nobody builds a modern web app 100% from scratch without third-party packages or libraries. If a junior dev builds a custom system without deep threat modeling and security audits, every line of unvalidated code becomes an invisible zero-day waiting to happen. Moving away from WP doesn't eliminate security debt—it just shifts the entire patching burden onto a single dev.
3. Why WordPress Gets Hit: WP powers roughly 40% of the web, so naturally it’s a giant target. But its core is actually battle-tested by thousands of security researchers. Over 95% of WP vulnerabilities stem from unpatched third-party plugins and poor maintenance, not the core CMS itself.
4. Business Reality: "Mr. Fancy Businessman" relies on speed and predictable costs. Rebuilding a complex app from scratch for tens of thousands of dollars—plus indefinite custom maintenance—rarely makes financial sense. Businesses stay on platforms like WP because it