For most users though, you’ll never know of the downsides to Wordpress, but for any plugin developers that come from a true development background, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

Do web masters still exist? I thought they were an extinct creature from the 90’s. I certainly have no desire to be one though, I can assure you.

As for “how hard can it be to edit a .php and input the code you want?”
Well, quite hard indeed. The code I want looks nothing like the code that Wordpress is built on.

As for your first stage, second stage nonsense, that’s a jolly nice recipe for a little blog with a few thousand visitors, but when you’re dealing with tens of thousands per hour, then it doesn’t quite cut the mustard. Wordpress plugins vary drastically in quality, and more often than not are not suitable for such a busy site. not only that, but they simply don’t exist for my needs so I have to write my own, and that’s when Wordpress shows its true colours. It is a nightmare to work with.

Enjoy your nice little world of small time site development though. I’m sure you’ll do well in that market.

First stage > Get a theme, chuck it on, install some plug ins, write content.
Second Stage > Check out other wordpress blogs, find what you like > try and replicate the code or find another plug in which matches the one already seen > write content.
Are you guys fucking retarded or downers or something?

From end-user standpoint, WordPress is probably the best for two reasons: 1) end-users can easily update and change content themselves and 2) end-users can easily update the website themselves to the latest version(s) if the website is a simple blog.

Additionally, for most smaller websites with content only (less than 100 pages or 1000 with minimal styling differences between the various pages), I think WordPress is quite good.

Because millions affiliate marketers each build 30+ fake blogs with it every year.
Wordpress owes its entire success to marketers, not hobby bloggers.

I can’t understand how wordpress is so popular. Don’t get me wrong, Wordpress by itself is a great blogging platform. At the moment I’m working on a wordpress site for a customer (who’s previous webmaster abandonned the project) and I feel like It’s been years I’ve performed so poor. Wordpress is lacking the base priciples of good programming (like separation of concerns and solid OOP for instance) or I’m missing something.