Products · Product
WordPress
Raised as a usability problem by 237 people on Hacker News over 20 years (2007–2026), in 216 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
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Every issue, all time, most people first
Homepage takes 3-5 seconds to load with 10MB of scriptsUnreviewed
20072026- Homepage takes about 5 seconds to appear, which is unacceptable2025-04-05
- Homepage takes about 5 seconds to appear, which is unacceptable2025-04-05
- Homepage takes 3-5 seconds to load with about 10MB of bloated scripts and styles2024-03-17
Admin area scary for new users, cluttered by plugin entriesUnreviewed
20072026- Plugins flood the admin area with notifications and flashing upsell messages2026-07-27
- Admin interface feels crowded and bloated with menus the user doesn't need2024-03-24
- Admin interface is disorganised and inconsistent, becoming a mess of controls users fear touching once plugins are added2021-01-24
Hard to switch from new default editor back to ClassicUnreviewed
20072026- Forced to install a plugin to get a usable normal editor2024-05-28
- New editor is frustrating, requires expert knowledge to do simple tasks2024-05-07
- Classic editor is so confusing to find and use that the user gave up2021-05-28
Configuring plugins or themes is hard and makes users feel incompetentUnreviewed
20072026- Constant plugin needs and themes not working out of the box meant more time fixing than building2024-10-18
- Plugin architecture and installation were horrendous and fraught with many problems2023-07-14
- Admin UX is horrible, and plugins break each other, making it hard to work with2022-05-05
Struggles to make admin area work the way they wantUnreviewed
20072026- Setting up a WordPress site has a terrible admin experience2026-10-02
- End users easily mess things up by changing admin settings2021-01-08
- Struggles to make the admin area work the way they want2013-12-23
Self-hosting requires too much server management and maintenanceUnreviewed
20072026- Hosting the blog itself requires too much server management and maintenance2020-08-16
- Setting up a blog needs hosting, admin panels, plugins, and template edits that often fail2015-11-09
- Confusing config options and LAMP setup make self-hosting WordPress hard to keep running2013-08-21
Non-technical users confused about what they are editingUnreviewed
20072026- Users get lost and make a mess once editing goes beyond basic text formatting2021-01-24
- Customers can't figure out how to edit their sites; editor is unhelpful2015-05-19
- Non-technical users may be confused about what they are editing and where2010-11-21
Simple site setup needed custom plugins and troubleshootingUnreviewed
20072026- Setting up a simple site required custom plugins and troubleshooting, taking more time than writing2022-10-17
- Simple e-commerce tasks took a very long time to complete with plugins2017-07-17
- Slow and too much boilerplate to write for custom sites2014-04-11
Poorly documented API makes plugin development harderUnreviewed
20072026- Developers find API naming and usage inconsistent, making code hard to read2022-05-23
- Plugin APIs are confusing, inconsistently named, and return hard-to-predict datatypes2020-08-16
- Poorly documented API makes plugin development harder than it should be2009-01-27
Typing lags badly in long posts, making editor unusableUnreviewed
20072026- Typing becomes extremely laggy in long posts, making the editor unusable2022-11-05
- Editor becomes very laggy with long stories or many list bullets2020-12-28
- Editor is slow to load because too much JavaScript is loaded2009-11-04
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Marketing teams struggle with WordPress and static site generator setup and editing2026-10-31
- Sites feel sluggish to visitors, so owners add caching plugins2026-10-21
- Setting up a WordPress site has a terrible admin experience2026-10-02
- Many frequently used plugin development methods are undocumented and untyped2026-09-22
- Plugins flood the admin area with notifications and flashing upsell messages2026-07-27
- Described as hot garbage that people shouldn't touch, with no specific problem named2026-04-28
- Plugin-heavy WordPress sites become slow, brittle, and hard to fix without breaking them2026-04-05
- Admin screen is cluttered with meaningless notices and an overly long sidebar2026-04-01
- Debugging production sites is slow and painful, requiring copying files and database to local2025-12-01
- Non-technical people must learn PHP and databases to get a working site2025-10-01
- Non-technical people find WordPress very confusing to navigate and get utterly lost in it2025-09-04
- Some plugin companies make cancelling subscriptions difficult using dark patterns2025-07-12
- New blog admin interface is disliked, so user redirects to the old interface2025-06-01
- Block editor redesign made the product harder to use, per commenter2025-04-11
- Homepage takes about 5 seconds to appear, which is unacceptable2025-04-05
- Homepage takes about 5 seconds to appear, which is unacceptable2025-04-05
- Extending it without plugins is a nightmare; adding custom fields is laborious2025-01-13
- Deployment and hosting docs are almost impossible to find2025-01-13
- Contributing to WordPress is so much work that the commenter gave up2025-01-12
- Customers can't remove the confusing blog feature from WordPress core2024-12-30
- Opt-out buttons are hidden deep in pages, and plugins use dark-pattern re-billing and upsells2024-10-28
- Constant plugin needs and themes not working out of the box meant more time fixing than building2024-10-18
- Installing a theme adds layers of builders, templates and new interfaces, making simple sites a labyrinth2024-10-18
- Plugins constantly nag with upgrade banners and popups in many styles2024-10-11
- Static sites require markdown files and Git, which marketing staff find hard to edit with2024-10-09
- Block-based editor is a recipe for disaster for editors and agencies, too easy to go wild2024-10-05
- Plugin pricing is opaque until installed, forcing off-site paid installs2024-10-04
- Hard to learn; documentation hidden, simple tables require implementing everything manually2024-10-04
- Maintaining WordPress sites is annoying and needs extra add-ons for reliability2024-09-28
- Couldn't figure out how to define a route; no router, code scattered across docs2024-09-15
- Users re-register, end up with multiple accounts, and can't remember which email and password match which ID2024-08-07
- Newer WordPress interface is horrible to use for blogging2024-07-13
- Links appear to work but silently show the wrong content, unnoticed2024-06-13
- Couldn't find where to set an excerpt; the cutoff needed hidden HTML comments2024-05-29
- Block theme markup is error-prone to write, with no editor support2024-05-28
- Forced to install a plugin to get a usable normal editor2024-05-28
- Media items are handled in a confusing way that the commenter wishes were different2024-05-28
- Basic features like post duplication and email logging missing, forcing reliance on many plugins2024-05-28
- Plugins duplicate each other's features, causing conflicts and a cluttered, unusable site2024-05-28
- New editor is frustrating, requires expert knowledge to do simple tasks2024-05-07
- Admin interface feels crowded and bloated with menus the user doesn't need2024-03-24
- Too complex and cluttered; user needed a 90-minute video to build a site2024-03-21
- Can't tell which plugin injects a tracking pixel, so must hunt through plugins2024-03-21
- Homepage takes 3-5 seconds to load with about 10MB of bloated scripts and styles2024-03-17
- Mobile editor is really awful, hard to use on phones2024-02-07
- Commenter found the free WordPress site difficult to use and switched to Blogspot2024-02-01
- Export omits content and media must be fetched separately2023-12-31
- Plugins add inconsistent interface styles and lots of banners in admin2023-12-11
- Changing a simple style like background requires dealing with theme templates and script enqueuing2023-10-30
- New users can't tell how to do basic tasks or whether add-ons are needed2023-10-17