Where did all the WordPress editors go?
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@davew asks us to Think Different about WordPress, and reflects on the future of WordPress, and interfaces to interact with WordPress, whether it is to create or to consume content from a WordPress site. He talks about WordPress in comparison to social networks like Bluesky or Mastodon. It’s a compelling vision, and that comparison is very appropriate at a time where it’s easier than ever to turn a WordPress site into a Fediverse presence, thanks to the work of @pfefferle and @obenland on the ActivityPub plugin. My home on the web is my WordPress site, and I’m still very happy with that choice.
Dave has been working hard on a new way to interact with your WordPress site: an opinionated, minimalist editor built with writers in mind. As I watch WordLand grow, I can’t help but think about my beginnings with WordPress, more specifically with third-party WordPress editors.
Where did the all the third-party editors go?
15+ years ago, third-party editors weren’t just nice to have. They were essential. If you were a serious blogger, you probably used MarsEdit on your Mac, or Windows Live Writer on PC. Those 2 editors were probably the biggest third-party editors for WordPress at the time, and were built on top of WordPress’ XML-RPC API. It worked well, except when your hosting provider blocked XML-RPC altogether as a quick fix to avoid XML-RPC pingbacks being used to DDoS sites! That API is still around, and is a good testament for WordPress’ promise of backwards compatibility.
Not only did those editors work well, they were a great alternative to the default post editor in WordPress, which, frankly, sucked for writers using it every day. I remember using it almost exclusively with the “code” view to avoid the dreaded HTML adjustments in the visual editor.
Over the years, MarsEdit and Windows Live Writer slowly disappeared, and a few other options appeared. Here are a few that come to mind:
- Ulysses for Apple users.
- iAWriter for minimalist / focussed writers.
- The Google docs to WordPress browser extension
- StackEdit for Markdown fans.
- Zoho Writer
Fast-forward to today, I don’t think any of those options are that popular anymore. WordPress’ classic editor is still around, but there is a new(-ish) kid on the block with the Gutenberg editor. That editor is still very divisive, especially for folks used to editors of the past.
But if Gutenberg is so problematic, why haven’t third-party editors made a comeback? I have a few theories.
Maybe it’s just “good enough”?
Maybe, despite all its flaws, Gutenberg crossed a critical threshold. It’s not perfect, but it does the job, better than the classic editor did back when third-party editors were necessary, even if some still struggle to adopt the new editor.
Did Elementor and other page builders take over the third-party editor market?
Page builders like Elementor have become increasingly popular in the past 10 years. For many new WordPress users, they’re the default post editor interface, they’re the definition of “editing in WordPress” for many. They offer many more visual editing options that third-party editors just cannot offer.
Maybe the market for text-focused editors shrank because WordPress itself pivoted away from text?
Maybe, once again, “blogging is dead”?
While WordPress was largely viewed as a blogging platform 15 years ago, it’s no longer the case today. It powers online stores, small and large business sites, portfolios, and more.
For such site owners, there is no need for an external editor. In fact, there is often no need for posts at all.
Custom blocks can only be managed in the core editor
This may be my number 1 theory. 15 years ago, shortcodes were the most popular way to add custom content to your WordPress posts. This could be done from a third-party editor with no issues.
Nowadays, many plugins offer blocks that are useful for bloggers. Calls to Action, ads, newsletter popups, social media embeds, … They’re not just formatting tools, they’re useful every day, and they’re all available natively in the core editor. A third-party editor can’t replicate them without rebuilding half of WordPress.
Writers may choose the core editor because using anything else may mean losing traffic and revenue tools.
Copy/paste is just better than it was
Third-party editors focused on publishing to WordPress may have become obsolete because there are so many other editors out there, none of them publishing to WordPress. Folks can write in Obsidian, Notion, ChatGPT, … and then copy / paste the output into the core editor. The Gutenberg editor is now a lot more capable of picking up the right format on paste.
Editing consequently happens in custom tools not dedicated to publishing. WordPress is just the final step, the publishing pipeline.
Platforms now offer more than an editor
I think there is another force at play that directly challenges Dave’s vision: the rise of bundled publishing platforms like Substack.
Platforms like Substack don’t just offer an editor. They offer you an audience. Your posts can be promoted to Substack readers that are already logged in, can receive newsletters via email, are used to rely on Substack for their daily reading, and have payment methods saved and available in one click to pay you.
This goes against Dave’s ideas of interop and open standards like RSS, because as a creator you don’t have to think about any of that anymore. Instead of thinking about their content flowing freely between platforms with things like ActivityPub or RSS, folks can pick a walled garden where there is no friction. You don’t have to worry about an editor, plugins, you don’t have to know what RSS or ActivityPub is. You can just focus on publishing and trust the platform to do the rest.
“Trust” is the operative word here. You lose a lot of control over your content and your workflow. You lose ownership and data portability, but you may gain something that matters a lot more to you: the eyes of an audience through recommendation engines built by the platform to keep their readers there, and monetization tools to make money from your audience.
What This Means for WordLand
I think Dave’s WordLand faces a lot of those challenges, like the other third-party editors I mentioned above. It’s not just a technical challenge though ; it’s a challenge to build something with values that differ from some of the popular platforms out there, like Substack or Bluesky.
That’s not to say it cannot work. 🙂 There will always be a group of people who value content ownership and the open web. In my experience, that group of people actually blogs quite a bit!
I consider myself one of those people. The web still means something special to me.
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@davew asks us to Think Different about WordPress, and reflects on the future of WordPress, and interfaces to interact with WordPress, whether it is to create or to consume content from a WordPress site. He talks about WordPress in comparison to social networks like Bluesky or Mastodon. It’s a compelling vision, and that comparison is very appropriate at a time where it’s easier than ever to turn a WordPress site into a Fediverse presence, thanks to the work of @pfefferle and @obenland on the ActivityPub plugin. My home on the web is my WordPress site, and I’m still very happy with that choice.
Dave has been working hard on a new way to interact with your WordPress site: an opinionated, minimalist editor built with writers in mind. As I watch WordLand grow, I can’t help but think about my beginnings with WordPress, more specifically with third-party WordPress editors.
Where did the all the third-party editors go?
15+ years ago, third-party editors weren’t just nice to have. They were essential. If you were a serious blogger, you probably used MarsEdit on your Mac, or Windows Live Writer on PC. Those 2 editors were probably the biggest third-party editors for WordPress at the time, and were built on top of WordPress’ XML-RPC API. It worked well, except when your hosting provider blocked XML-RPC altogether as a quick fix to avoid XML-RPC pingbacks being used to DDoS sites! That API is still around, and is a good testament for WordPress’ promise of backwards compatibility.
Not only did those editors work well, they were a great alternative to the default post editor in WordPress, which, frankly, sucked for writers using it every day. I remember using it almost exclusively with the “code” view to avoid the dreaded HTML adjustments in the visual editor.
Over the years, MarsEdit and Windows Live Writer slowly disappeared, and a few other options appeared. Here are a few that come to mind:
- Ulysses for Apple users.
- iAWriter for minimalist / focussed writers.
- The Google docs to WordPress browser extension
- StackEdit for Markdown fans.
- Zoho Writer
Fast-forward to today, I don’t think any of those options are that popular anymore. WordPress’ classic editor is still around, but there is a new(-ish) kid on the block with the Gutenberg editor. That editor is still very divisive, especially for folks used to editors of the past.
But if Gutenberg is so problematic, why haven’t third-party editors made a comeback? I have a few theories.
Maybe it’s just “good enough”?
Maybe, despite all its flaws, Gutenberg crossed a critical threshold. It’s not perfect, but it does the job, better than the classic editor did back when third-party editors were necessary, even if some still struggle to adopt the new editor.
Did Elementor and other page builders take over the third-party editor market?
Page builders like Elementor have become increasingly popular in the past 10 years. For many new WordPress users, they’re the default post editor interface, they’re the definition of “editing in WordPress” for many. They offer many more visual editing options that third-party editors just cannot offer.
Maybe the market for text-focused editors shrank because WordPress itself pivoted away from text?
Maybe, once again, “blogging is dead”?
While WordPress was largely viewed as a blogging platform 15 years ago, it’s no longer the case today. It powers online stores, small and large business sites, portfolios, and more.
For such site owners, there is no need for an external editor. In fact, there is often no need for posts at all.
Custom blocks can only be managed in the core editor
This may be my number 1 theory. 15 years ago, shortcodes were the most popular way to add custom content to your WordPress posts. This could be done from a third-party editor with no issues.
Nowadays, many plugins offer blocks that are useful for bloggers. Calls to Action, ads, newsletter popups, social media embeds, … They’re not just formatting tools, they’re useful every day, and they’re all available natively in the core editor. A third-party editor can’t replicate them without rebuilding half of WordPress.
Writers may choose the core editor because using anything else may mean losing traffic and revenue tools.
Copy/paste is just better than it was
Third-party editors focused on publishing to WordPress may have become obsolete because there are so many other editors out there, none of them publishing to WordPress. Folks can write in Obsidian, Notion, ChatGPT, … and then copy / paste the output into the core editor. The Gutenberg editor is now a lot more capable of picking up the right format on paste.
Editing consequently happens in custom tools not dedicated to publishing. WordPress is just the final step, the publishing pipeline.
Platforms now offer more than an editor
I think there is another force at play that directly challenges Dave’s vision: the rise of bundled publishing platforms like Substack.
Platforms like Substack don’t just offer an editor. They offer you an audience. Your posts can be promoted to Substack readers that are already logged in, can receive newsletters via email, are used to rely on Substack for their daily reading, and have payment methods saved and available in one click to pay you.
This goes against Dave’s ideas of interop and open standards like RSS, because as a creator you don’t have to think about any of that anymore. Instead of thinking about their content flowing freely between platforms with things like ActivityPub or RSS, folks can pick a walled garden where there is no friction. You don’t have to worry about an editor, plugins, you don’t have to know what RSS or ActivityPub is. You can just focus on publishing and trust the platform to do the rest.
“Trust” is the operative word here. You lose a lot of control over your content and your workflow. You lose ownership and data portability, but you may gain something that matters a lot more to you: the eyes of an audience through recommendation engines built by the platform to keep their readers there, and monetization tools to make money from your audience.
What This Means for WordLand
I think Dave’s WordLand faces a lot of those challenges, like the other third-party editors I mentioned above. It’s not just a technical challenge though ; it’s a challenge to build something with values that differ from some of the popular platforms out there, like Substack or Bluesky.
That’s not to say it cannot work. 🙂 There will always be a group of people who value content ownership and the open web. In my experience, that group of people actually blogs quite a bit!
I consider myself one of those people. The web still means something special to me.
I recorded a podcast expanding on what I said in regard to what Jeremy wrote here.
https://shownotes.scripting.com/scripting/2025/09/03/lastChanceForTheOpenWeb.html
I added a bit on my blog today.
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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@lmorchard wrote a great post, I relate to a lot of what he’s saying in there. It’s hard to pick one part to quote in particular, so I would encourage you to go read the whole thing!
I think recognizing which kind of grief you’re feeling is the actually useful thing here. If you’re mourning the loss of the craft itself—the texture of writing code, the satisfaction of an elegant solution—that’s real, and no amount of “just adapt” addresses it. You might need to find that satisfaction somewhere else, or accept that work is going to feel different. Frankly, we’ve been lucky there’s been a livelihood in craft up to now.
If you’re mourning the context—the changing web, the shifting career landscape, the uncertainty—that’s real too, but it’s more actionable. You can learn new tools. You can push for the web you want, even if it’s a small web. You can grieve and adapt at the same time.
Grief and the AI Split
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There’s a certain type of blog post I sometimes save for later. Not because I want to re-read it right away, but because it’s worth revisiting in six months to see how things actually played out.
“Migrating PerezBox From WordPress to Flat PHP in 90 Minutes” is one of those posts.
I actually migrated perezbox.com from a full WordPress installation to a flat PHP site with zero external dependencies.
No database. No frameworks. No build tools. No package managers. No node_modules. No Composer. No plugins. Just PHP, HTML, CSS
The “I migrated away from WordPress to something simpler” post is a classic of the genre. I understand the appeal, it can be tempting. In fact, I have tried migrating away from WordPress in the past. About fifteen years ago I tried Jekyll, as a way to experiment and try something new. I came back to WordPress. Twelve years ago I tried Ghost, partly for the same reasons. I came back again. And I published another reaction post 10 years ago, responding to a post saying WordPress was doomed, static site generators were in.
I won’t try to convince you not to try alternatives to WordPress. In fact I think you should, from time to time. It’s healthy to look at what’s on the other side of the fence from time to time, it’s always a good learning experience. I do, however, think we should always be honest with ourselves about the trade-offs.
Whether it makes sense depends a lot on the type of site you’re running and how often your content or design actually needs to change. For the right project, a flat-file setup can be a good fit.
Here are a few questions I would ask, 6 months from now.
Are you still using your custom solution?WordPress is much more than a post editor ; it’s an ecosystem. And it’s easy to underestimate everything you take for granted until it’s gone. Galleries, embedded content types, archive pages, category views, comments, all the little things that just work. And that’s not even taking plugins into consideration, and the myriad of other features they can bring to WordPress. A few months in, when you need one of those things, you’ll have to build it from scratch or accept that your site won’t support that.
WordPress comes with so many little things that come bundled with the software, we don’t even think about them. A good example may be responsive images. It may sometimes seem like bloat to see so many different image sizes generated every time you upload a new image to WordPress, but those can be useful in so many different places.
It may not be a feature you’d put in a comparison table. But it’s one of hundreds of small things the platform does for you without you ever having to think about it.
Are you still publishing?This one matters even more to me. When your publishing flow changes, when it’s no longer a matter of opening a familiar editor (on desktop or on mobile) and hitting publish, the friction adds up. And in a lot of cases like this, people just… publish less.
That’s obviously less of an argument with AI: AI can help you with that flow, can publish / push for you, can write your posts for you. AI does change things, for building sites as much as for everything else.
Generating code has become (too?) easy. You can reinvent the wheel for every project if you want to ; no need for a library, a plugin, or a third-party service when you can just ask an AI to build you a custom one.
But it cuts both ways. You can’t say your site has “zero external dependencies” and then build your entire publishing pipeline around Claude. That is a dependency, a significant one. It’s a paid service, you don’t control it, it can unreliable at times, it can change its pricing tomorrow. You can certainly do without it and edit files the old fashioned way, but then we’re back to the problem I mentioned above. It becomes considerably harder to publish than it ever was with WordPress.
So the real questions become: once the site is live, how easy is it to maintain? If updating it requires leaning on AI every time, are you comfortable with that trade-off? Is that really simpler than what you had before, or just a different kind of complexity? Did you trade one dependency for another?
I am really curious to see what the future has in store for us, and for WordPress as a whole. I’ll check back in six months I guess 🙂
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WordCamp Bretagne revient !
C’est maintenant officiel, WordCamp Bretagne est de retour en 2026, le 18 septembre, encore une fois à Rennes, encore une fois au Couvent des Jacobins.
Marquez la date dans vos calendriers, on se donne rendez-vous là-bas !
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What kind of customizations did you have in mind? What would you like your site to look like?
I’ve learned to really appreciate the flexibility of the block-based themes in WordPress ; they offer a lot that was previously only available to folks comfortable with PHP. That said, this is mostly about layout and display. If you want to display custom data, you may still have to dive into code to get what you need. That is, unless someone else already developed it 🙂
The ActivityPub plugin includes more and more blocks that can help bring Fediverse functionality to your site, to create real Fediverse profiles for authors. If you have ideas of more things we could implement, please let us, either in the WordPress.org support forums for the plugin, on GitHub, or right here (you can ping @pfefferle or me any time!)
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Notre commune a un site officiel qui sert beaucoup. Toutes les annonces officielles y sont publiées, et sont ensuite partagées sur les réseaux sociaux, essentiellement Facebook, mais aussi LinkedIn. YouTube aussi est de plus en plus utilisé ; les réunions du conseil y sont streamés en live, puis donc disponibles sur le long terme, et mises à disposition sur le site (et donc dispo par RSS aussi). De nombreuses catégories peuvent être suivies via des flux différents, ce qui est très utile.
Certaines communications sont encore seulement publiées sur Facebook malheureusement, mais le pense que les choses se sont améliorées de ce côté là. On peut maintenant se tenir au courant d’une grande majorité des nouvelles de la commune sans se rendre sur Facebook. Bon, on est loin de la présence sur le Fediverse tout de même 🙂
Toute cette présence est à mon avis le résultat de beaucoup d’éducation et de discussions, et pas quelque chose de forcément naturel pour chacun des élus. Il y a un grand contraste avec les communications de tous les partis se présentant aux élections, y compris le parti de la majorité, qui communiquent essentiellement via Facebook, ont des sites qui ne sont pas à jour, ont leurs programmes disponibles sur Facebook et pas sur le site, …
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One vaut, 4 main folders (using the PARA method), many (too many) subfolders. I think it could be better, but I haven’t found a better way yet. I’m not too worried about it though, I rely on search, bases, and internal links to navigate across my vault and it works.
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I’ve been building an RSS reader for the past year. No unread counts, no inbox to clear. Just a river that flows at its own pace.
Today it’s live on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. I wrote about everything that went into it.
Current, an RSS Reader, by @tgCurrent is a new RSS reader that takes a really interesting approach to how we consume feeds. Instead of treating your subscriptions as a to-do list with an ever-growing unread count, it presents your feeds as a river; articles flow in, linger for a while, and eventually fade away on their own.
Although the app is mac / iOS only, and paid, it’s not completely closed. You can hook it up to existing RSS backends like Feedbin or Miniflux.
The completionist part of me does miss the idea of reaching “inbox zero.” For me, inbox zero was never about obsessive consumption (or at least I like to think so); it was the permission to walk away. When I’ve read everything, I’m done. I can close the app and move on with my day. I wouldn’t want my RSS experience to turn into a TikTok-like endless scroll where I just keep going without thinking. Current isn’t exactly that though, and that’s where its velocity system gets really interesting.
Each feed gets assigned a half-life that determines how long its articles stay visible. Breaking news fade away faster than blog posts for example. This means the app naturally surfaces content proportionally to its nature; a prolific news site won’t drown out the small blogs you actually care about. The pace of consumption adapts to the pace of creation, which feels much more respectful of both the reader’s attention and the author’s intent.
On top of that, Current watches your reading patterns and offers suggestions to help you “quiet” noisy sources. If a feed floods your timeline with 18 articles in one day, or if you keep skipping posts from the same source, it’ll nudge you to rate-limit or mute it.
I would give the app a try, but it’s iOS and mac-only so far, so I guess I’ll have to wait! 🙂
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Could you check that the ActivityPub plugin is still active on your site? You seem to be using the Friends plugin but the ActivityFun plugin itself seems disabled.
You can also post in the plugin’s support forums if that doesn’t help ; we’ll be happy to help!
