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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Are you familiar with WordLand? I’ve mentioned it on this blog a few times: it’s a WordPress editor, designed for writers.
@davew built WordLand using the WordPress.com REST API, thus making the app available to everyone with a WordPress.com account. Once you’re logged in, you can pick any WordPress site connected to your account. It can be a WordPress.com site. It can also be a site hosted on another platform but using the Jetpack plugin to allow it to communicate with WordPress.com.
It works really well. It allows you to log in only once, to manage and publish on multiple sites from a central editor dashboard. This was one of the ideas behind the WordPress.com REST API when it was first built.
Of course, this means the WordLand app is only available to folks with a WordPress.com account, and using a site that’s either hosted on WordPress.com or where they’re able to install plugins like Jetpack.
If WordLand were to drop that requirement, it would be immediately usable by more people. It would open it to authors on sites where they don’t have permissions to install plugins, for example.
In this post, Dave outlined his idea for making WordLand available for self-hosted WordPress sites.
I’ve thought a bit about what that switch would mean in practice. I thought I’d share my first ideas here, for you Dave to consider as you start working on this project.
In my mind there are a few things to consider to get WordLand to work with self-hosted WordPress sites.
Mapping endpoint requirementsSelf-hosted sites ship with a REST API and endpoints, listed here.
Those endpoints allow viewing, publishing and editing posts, which is the base of what WordLand does. They also allow listing and editing categories, uploading media,…A first step may be to map the WordPress.com API endpoints used by WordLand with their equivalents on self-hosted sites.
The REST API docs will be a big help there. I am thinking you may have all WordLand needs with the endpoints available on all self-hosted WordPress sites today.As part of that mapping project, you’ll see that the expected schema is different for the 2 APIs. Although similar, there are differences. You’ll find the biggest differences may be in how categories are handled for example, since they are different from site to site. That’s something worth mapping as well, since it will mean making changes to the app accordingly.
AuthenticationOnce you have the endpoints figured out, you’ll need to tackle what’s probably going to be the hardest part: authentication.
With self-hosted sites, there is no centralized way to handle authentication. Folks will need to authenticate for each site where they want to publish. Application passwords are probably the best approach to take. They are available for all self-hosted sites and don’t require site owners to install anything. You’ll need to build a flow where site owners start by providing a site URL instead of clicking a log in button. That site URL, when passed to WordLand, allows the app to hit the REST API for that site, get the authentication URL, and redirect the site owner there so they can log in and go through the flow to create an application password and then come back to WordLand with that password.
A WordLand.social account for everyone?
They’ll need to repeat that for every new site they want to use with WordLand.Another alternative may be to first offer every WordLand user an option to log in to an account created with WordLand. The different connections and authentication information for one or more sites would be stored in that account. It would allow WordLand.social to keep working like it does today, as a central platform from which you can publish to multiple sites.
And the extraKeep in mind that Jetpack and WordPress.com also provide more than just the REST API endpoint and the authentication layers. They also provide other features you rely on in WordLand, like markdown support.
That’s all what comes to mind at first. Hopefully it helps you get started!
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Another recap for this new year. This time, I looked at the board games we played last year.
The big winner last year was Lost Cities, which we played 15 times. It remains a fun little game for couples, and we’ve enjoyed playing it, often 2 quick games before to go to bed to end the day.
Number 2 was Splendor. We’ve owned that game for more than 10 years at this point, and just like Lost Cities it’s the perfect game for 2, after a long day. Of note, this year I finally won a few games (my wife is a Splendor expert 🙂 ).
Andor: The Family Game was the highlight of the year for the kids and enjoyed by adults as well. The kids also played a lot of Cheating Moth. They like the fun of cheating.:) I suspect it will remain a 2026 favorite for our kids, although it may be dethroned by Coyote, which they find super fun (me too!).
We haven’t tried too many new games in 2025, and instead spent too much time watching TV shows. I’m hoping we can change that in 2026. if you have suggestions of things to try, let me know!
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@RakowskiBartosz Thank you, I’ll check those out, add some to my reading list for 2026!
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@jeremy yeah, I know what you're describing. Some authors end up overcomplicating everything to a point where it's difficult to follow and ignoring it would make reader skip most of the content.
Here's a list I shared recently:
https://hachyderm.io/@RakowskiBartosz/115856042913939875
I remember reading a series where the plot was emphasized and levels and numbers appeared very infrequently. If I manage to remember which one it was, I'll let you know.
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@RakowskiBartosz I think I’ll need to read more before I can form a good opinion. It’s certainly refreshing, and I enjoy the style. But I find it gets repetitive quite quickly. Once the protagonist has understood how the game-like elements work and has used them a bit, the author needs to introduce new mechanics to keep the book(s) interesting.
Dungeon Crawler Carl did this well with new mechanics on each level, and some really good character development. We see Carl grow, and we also get to know a slew of side-characters that are just as important to the main plot.
He Who Fights with Monsters attempted to do something with its rank system, but I don’t think it’s enough to keep the story interesting over time. It doesn’t help that its main character isn’t written to be as endearing as Carl. 🙂
I’m curious how other books in the genre tackle that challenge. If you have recommendations for future reads, let me know!
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@jeremy I've read those books in 2025, amongst others, but I've liked most of the ones you recommend 👍
What do you think about progression fantasy or litrpg, in general?
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If you liked Hermanos Gutiérrez, you’ll like this one too!
The rhythms, base, radio voice samples, guitar, and latin style seem to be sending me towards Manu Chao‘s Clandestino as a future album on repeat 🙂
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Another year, another recap post! Here is a quick overview of the books I read and enjoyed in 2025.
I don’t read a lot, so don’t expect a big post. I read a bit every night, to disconnect my brain and fall asleep. For this reason, you will only find fiction novels on my reading list. I also enjoy book series most of all, because they allow you to go deep into a story.
In 2025, I read 5 different book series:
The Captive’s WarThe Captive’s War is a trilogy of books by The Expanse’s authors James S. A. Corey. I enjoyed their writing style in The Expanse and was happy to see them start a new story. So far they’ve only released one book and one novella, but book 2 is scheduled to be released in the spring and you can already pre-order it. I enjoyed the beginning of the story, it sets up a really interesting world.
Children of TimeThe Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I read all 3 books and pre-ordered the fourth, also scheduled to be released in the spring. It’s a unique take on the future of humanity / alien life stories / artificial intelligence. The main story follows life as it involves on a terraformed planet. Instead of the monkeys that were supposed to evolve on the planet to pave the way for humans to get there, it’s spiders that end up evolving on that world. We follow their evolution, and in parallel we follow what’s left of the human race as they search for a planet to live.
Dungeon Crawler CarlDungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman.This was my surprise of the year. I was looking for a lighter read after Children of time, and stumbled across the first book of the series (there are currently 7 books in the series, with more on the way). I wasn’t familiar with the litRPG genre and didn’t know what to expect. Turns out, this is exactly what I needed. Picture this: a man (Carl) and his ex-girlfriend’s cat (Princess Donut) get thrown into a televised dungeon crawler gameshow, run by aliens on what’s left of planet Earth. If that sounds crazy, you’re getting the idea. 🙂 The 7 books are easy reads, original, entertaining, and definitely a good way to disconnect after a long day. I would definitely recommend the series. The first book in particular was interesting because I was discovering the story and the genre.
SiloFollowing that, I read the trilogy that inspired the TV series on Apple TV+: Silo, by Hugh Howey. I watched the show before to read the books, and I was surprised by how well the show had followed the original story. It’s a dark series about the future if humanity, but one one that I would recommend as well.
He Who Fights with MonstersThis was my last series of the year. He Who Fights With Monsters, by Shirtaloon, is comprised of 12 books. I’m not sure if the series is over, I’m at book 10 right now. I have mixed feelings about it. It’s an interesting story and idea, again in the litRPG genre. I’m just not a fan of the writing, it’s very repetitive, and I often wonder how this was published as it often feels like I’m reading something that I already read in the last chapter. The books for sure could be a lot shorter. The main character is also not very likable, and his growth over the books is overly explained, again and again, instead of letting us feel his growth for ourselves. At this point you must wonder why I read 10 books of this! I’d love to give you a good reason, but I think it’s just sunk cost fallacy 🙂
If I had to recommend only one book series, it would be Dungeon Crawler Carl. I’m looking forward to the next book!
