R.I.P. WordPress: Is the World's Most Popular Website Platform Dying?

After 15 years of building WordPress websites, I’ve reached a conclusion I never expected: I may never build another one.

That’s a pretty remarkable statement coming from someone who’s spent much of his professional life working with WordPress.

For more than a decade, WordPress has been my go-to platform for building websites for small and medium-sized businesses. I’ve built countless sites with it, recommended it to clients, maintained it, troubleshot it, and watched it evolve into the dominant website platform on the planet.

At its peak, WordPress powered roughly 43% of all websites worldwide. By October 2026, that figure had slipped to about 40%, according to W3Techs. That’s still an enormous market share, but the direction is worth paying attention to.

Is WordPress dying?

I’m not ready to write its obituary just yet. But I believe we’re witnessing the beginning of a fundamental change in how websites are built, maintained, and managed.

And the reason, unsurprisingly, is artificial intelligence.

I’ve Seen This Movie Before

I built my first website back in 1995.

In those days, building a website generally meant writing HTML code by hand. Eventually, products like Macromedia Dreamweaver came along and made the process considerably easier. Dreamweaver offered visual editing tools, previews, and integrated file transfers to your web server.

It was a big improvement.

Then came WordPress.

Originally conceived as a blogging platform, WordPress introduced something genuinely revolutionary: a database-driven content management system that could be operated entirely through a web browser.

You didn’t need specialized software installed on your computer. You could log into your website, create pages, publish articles, upload images, and manage your content.

Over time, an entire ecosystem developed around it.

Themes provided ready-made designs. Page builders like Divi and Elementor made sophisticated layouts accessible to people who weren’t programmers. Plugins added practically any functionality you could imagine, from search engine optimization to shopping carts and appointment scheduling.

An enormous community of developers, designers, and consultants grew around WordPress.

For years, it was an incredibly compelling solution.

And I was one of its biggest advocates.

But something has changed.

The Problem With WordPress Nobody Likes Talking About

WordPress has always had a dirty little secret.

It’s a maintenance nightmare.

Anyone who’s managed a significant number of WordPress websites knows exactly what I’m talking about.

There’s always something that needs updating. The WordPress core needs updating. The theme needs updating. The plugins need updating. And sometimes, updating one thing breaks something else.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve performed a perfectly routine WordPress update, only to discover that the website suddenly stopped working properly.

Usually, the culprit was some plugin that didn’t play nicely with the latest version.

The troubleshooting process became almost comically predictable. Disable the plugins, get the website functioning again, and then turn them back on one at a time until you identify the troublemaker.

Then figure out how to fix it.

Meanwhile, the business owner is wondering why they’re paying someone to repair a website that was working perfectly well yesterday.

And frankly, I understood their frustration.

I never enjoyed billing clients for that kind of work. It didn’t feel productive. I wasn’t improving their marketing, generating leads, or helping them grow.

I was just plugging holes in the dam.

Then there’s security.

WordPress websites are frequent targets for hackers, particularly when they’re running outdated software, vulnerable plugins, or poorly secured administrator accounts.

Backups, security plugins, malware scans, updates, compatibility testing. It all becomes part of the ongoing responsibility of owning a WordPress website.

And none of it is what the business owner actually bought the website for.

They bought it to attract customers.

Then AI Changed the Equation

Recently, I rebuilt my own company’s website, NewPhase.com, using an entirely different approach.

No WordPress.

No Divi.

No Elementor.

No collection of plugins holding everything together.

Instead, I used artificial intelligence to help build the website from the ground up, using a modern development framework called Astro and hosting it on Cloudflare Pages.

And here’s the remarkable part.

I built almost the entire website by talking to AI.

Literally talking.

I’d explain what I wanted, review the results, suggest changes, and tell the AI what to do next.

I wasn’t sitting there writing hundreds of lines of code. I wasn’t dragging modules around a visual page builder. I wasn’t searching through plugin directories trying to find something that would do what I needed.

I was directing the process.

In fact, I deliberately approached the project as an experiment to see whether I could build a professional website primarily through voice conversations with AI.

It turns out I could.

And the result genuinely surprised me.

It’s Like Trading Your Old Car for a Lamborghini

One of the first things I noticed about the new website was its speed.

It’s astonishingly fast.

Click something, and it’s there. No hesitation. No waiting for a collection of plugins, scripts, and database queries to finish doing their thing.

Just an immediate response.

Now, to be fair, a properly optimized WordPress website can also be fast. But achieving that performance often requires considerable effort, careful hosting choices, caching, optimization plugins, and ongoing attention.

My new website achieves its speed largely through its underlying architecture.

Astro can generate lightweight pages that require very little processing in the visitor’s browser. Cloudflare Pages delivers those files through a global network designed for speed.

There’s simply less machinery involved.

And once you’ve experienced that difference, it’s hard to go back.

It’s like trading an old, sluggish car for a Lamborghini.

You suddenly realize how good the driving experience could have been all along.

For a business owner, website speed isn’t just a technical curiosity. It affects the experience of potential customers, particularly people browsing on their phones.

A slow website can lose visitors before they ever have a chance to contact you.

Do Most Small Business Websites Even Need WordPress?

Here’s a question I’ve been asking myself lately.

Why are we using sophisticated database-driven content management systems to operate websites that are essentially online brochures?

Think about the typical website for a roofing company, painting contractor, landscaper, or local professional services firm.

It explains what the company does, showcases its work, describes its services, provides some testimonials, and gives visitors a way to get in touch.

That’s what we call a brochure website.

There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, a well-designed brochure website can be an incredibly effective marketing tool.

But does it really need a complex content management system running behind the scenes?

Often, the answer is no.

Many small business owners have websites with blogging capabilities they’ve barely used. They might have published four or five articles over several years before deciding that posting on Facebook or Instagram was easier.

Yet they’re still maintaining the database, plugins, themes, and administration system that came with WordPress.

It’s a bit like buying a commercial kitchen to make toast.

With modern AI-assisted development, I can build fast, attractive, highly functional websites without much of that underlying complexity.

And if a business genuinely needs a content management system, there are alternatives, including lightweight or headless CMS solutions that can work with modern websites.

WordPress is no longer the only practical way to give someone control over their content.

What About Security, Backups, and Maintenance?

This is another area where my experience has changed dramatically.

My new website doesn’t have a public WordPress-style administrator login. It doesn’t depend on a collection of third-party plugins that constantly need updating.

That eliminates several common sources of vulnerability.

It doesn’t make the website magically immune to security problems. No technology can promise that. But a simpler, largely static website has fewer moving parts and generally presents a smaller attack surface.

The development process is simpler, too.

I keep the website’s source code in GitHub, a platform that tracks changes and preserves previous versions.

If I make a change that doesn’t work out, I can return to an earlier version.

Deploying an updated website is remarkably straightforward.

Compare that with the traditional WordPress backup process, which often involves packaging up a database, website files, themes, plugins, and configurations, then restoring everything correctly if something goes wrong.

WordPress certainly has backup and recovery tools. I’ve used them for years.

But the new approach feels considerably cleaner.

And perhaps most importantly, I can spend more time improving the website and less time maintaining the machinery underneath it.

AI Doesn’t Make Experience Irrelevant. It Makes Experience More Valuable.

At this point, you might be thinking:

“If AI can build a website, why would I need to hire a web developer or marketing agency?”

Fair question.

But consider this analogy.

You can walk into Home Depot and buy an incredible collection of tools. Power saws, laser levels, nail guns, precision measuring equipment. The tools available today are extraordinary.

Does owning those tools make you an experienced home builder?

Of course not.

You might manage to build something. You might even do a pretty decent job.

But would you expect to compete with a contractor who’s been building houses for 30 years?

Probably not.

The tools are only part of the equation.

The same applies to websites.

AI can generate code, create layouts, suggest content, and build functioning websites. But it doesn’t automatically understand your business, your customers, your competitive environment, or what makes a website commercially effective.

Someone still needs to make those decisions.

After more than 31 years in web development and digital marketing, I have a pretty good understanding of what makes a business website work.

I know what information customers are looking for. I know how navigation should be structured. I understand search engine optimization, conversion strategies, usability, mobile responsiveness, and the countless details that distinguish a good-looking website from an effective marketing tool.

AI hasn’t made that experience obsolete.

It’s allowed me to apply that experience without getting bogged down in the technical minutiae.

My role has changed from being the person who builds everything to being the person who orchestrates the process.

And frankly, I love that.

I’ve always been more interested in the finished product and what it accomplishes for the client than in the mechanics of writing code.

Now I can concentrate on exactly that.

Could Business Owners Manage Their Own AI-Built Websites?

Absolutely.

In fact, I think this is one of the most exciting possibilities.

Imagine a painting contractor who wants to promote a fall special.

Instead of logging into WordPress, finding the right page, opening a visual editor, adjusting text modules, and worrying about breaking the layout, they could simply tell an AI assistant:

“Update my website to promote our fall interior painting special. Make it prominent on the homepage and remove it at the end of November.”

The AI could prepare those changes for review, and once approved, publish them.

That’s a very different experience from traditional website management.

Of course, getting to that point requires the right tools, configuration, and safeguards. It’s not something every business owner can do effortlessly today.

But the direction is clear.

The goal shouldn’t be to turn every roofer, painter, or landscaper into a web developer.

It should be to give them a professionally built marketing platform they can manage more naturally, without having to understand everything happening behind the scenes.

That’s a much more interesting proposition.

Is WordPress Finished? Not So Fast.

I don’t want to suggest that WordPress has suddenly become useless.

It hasn’t.

It still powers an enormous percentage of the internet, and there are plenty of legitimate reasons to continue using it.

Complex websites, membership platforms, publishing operations, and e-commerce businesses may have requirements that make WordPress and its extensive plugin ecosystem attractive.

WooCommerce, for example, remains a capable solution for online stores.

And platforms like Shopify have built entire businesses around the specialized requirements of e-commerce.

Building a website that displays your company’s services is one thing.

Building a website that manages thousands of products, inventory, customer accounts, payment processing, shipping, taxes, and returns is quite another.

AI can assist with all of those things, but I wouldn’t automatically recommend replacing a mature e-commerce platform with a custom AI-generated solution.

Not yet, anyway.

And I’m certainly not going to contact all my existing WordPress clients and tell them to throw away perfectly functional websites.

If a website is doing its job, generating business, and operating reliably, there may be no compelling reason to replace it.

But here’s the distinction.

If I were starting a new brochure-style business website today, WordPress would no longer be my first choice.

In fact, I find it difficult to imagine choosing WordPress again for that kind of project.

Coming from someone who’s relied on it for roughly 15 years, that’s a significant change.

Remember the Yellow Pages?

There’s another reason I’m taking this transition seriously.

I’ve seen something similar happen before.

Years ago, when the internet was beginning to transform local business marketing, many companies were still spending enormous amounts of money advertising in the Yellow Pages.

I remember advising clients that they needed to start shifting their attention and marketing budgets toward the internet.

Not everyone believed me.

Some business owners were deeply invested in the traditional directory model. It was familiar, it had worked for years, and they couldn’t imagine customers abandoning it.

But the shift happened.

Not overnight.

It took years for consumer behavior, technology, and business practices to catch up.

And the Yellow Pages didn’t disappear in a single dramatic moment. They simply became less and less relevant as better alternatives emerged.

I believe we’re at the beginning of another transition.

WordPress isn’t going to vanish tomorrow.

But it was designed for an era when humans needed elaborate software interfaces to create and manage websites.

We’re moving toward an era where humans can explain what they want and intelligent systems can build, modify, and maintain it.

That’s a profound change.

And it raises an interesting question:

If AI can create the website directly, how much of the traditional website-building machinery do we still need?

So, R.I.P. WordPress?

Maybe the headline is a little premature.

WordPress isn’t dead.

But I suspect its days as the automatic, default choice for small business websites are numbered.

The technology that made WordPress revolutionary is being challenged by something fundamentally different.

Not just a better page builder.

Not another plugin.

Not another theme.

An entirely different way of creating and managing websites.

For small business owners, that’s potentially very good news.

Faster websites. Less maintenance. Fewer technical headaches. More flexibility. And the possibility of making changes simply by describing what you want.

The real opportunity isn’t just to build websites more cheaply or quickly.

It’s to spend less time wrestling with technology and more time making websites do what they’re supposed to do: help businesses attract customers and grow.

I spent 15 years building websites with WordPress.

I don’t regret a minute of it.

But having experienced what’s possible now, I’m not sure I’ll ever go back.

And I have a feeling I’m not going to be the only one.