WordPress VS Grav

Many website builders today are designed to be user-friendly, allowing even non-tech-savvy individuals to build decent websites. Platforms like Wix, Squarespace, Carrd, and WordPress (with themes and plugins) offer powerful DIY solutions.

I do not believe it is legally "GPL v2 or later" at all. The original b2 license was GPL v2. There was no or later version option in the original b2 license. Given that WordPress is a derivative work, it has to keep the same or compatible license. Which "GPL v2 or later" is not.

Note how the original license is GPL v2 at [0], then the "or later" header is added much later at [1] seemingly out of nowhere.

[0] - https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blame/04c9051a7d765cb...

[1] - https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/commit/8cbd92f9f8269a...

I'm a WordPress (WP) developer and avid user of WP Engine. I just tested some of my WordPress sites hosted on WP Engine and can confirm that it's currently not possible to take some actions that pull data from https://wordpress.org/, such as not updating WP plugins or installing new WP plugins.

I'm furious at Matt Mullenweg and Auttomatic, as they control wordpress.org as Auttomatic hosts wordpress.org and one or both of them probably decided to block some important WordPress features on WP Engine servers. Also below is text from the https://wordpressfoundation.org/ homepage:

[quote]

Powering more than 40% of the top 10 million websites on the Internet today according to WikiPedia, WordPress continues to be one of the most popular content management systems in the world. Though its core components remain primarily PHP and MySQL/MariaDB, a lot has changed in the past 20 years in terms of infrastructure and hosting options.

To get started working, first of all, you need to install Wordpress Zip from Wordpress.org and place it in the htdocs if you are using XAMPP or www if you are using WAMP or MAMP, this way if you want to test WordPress locally but if you want to go online directly, often you're going to use a hosting, for instance, Namecheap or Goddady, the majority of them use Softaculous it's a commercial script library that automates the installation of commercial and open source web applications in your website hosting.

Blogging engine alternative

Create a WordPress.org Account: If you don’t already have one, create an account on WordPress.org.

Not mentioned in OP: https://getgrav.org/

I used it for a project once and both me and the client were happy.

It's Grav CMS.

I took a more traditional approach, focusing on something that's "good enough", which in my case was a cheap VPS and an install of Grav: https://getgrav.org/

Some optional customization for page templates/fonts/CSS, some CI so I can build and deploy it inside of a Docker container, Matomo for analytics that respect privacy (which I already use elsewhere) and some additional web server configuration to hide anything interesting behind an additional login and I'm good. Maybe backups and uptime monitoring if I'm feeling brave, which is what most sites should also have (so copy + paste there).

All of that for under 100 euros per year (could also pay half of that if I didn't host anything else on the server), the blog has actually survived getting on the front page of HN once or twice and requires relatively little maintenance, at least a bit less than a proper install of WordPress, due to its larger surface area.

The best thing is that it's simple enough for me to understand how it works, to be able to move it anywhere as needed and use more or less plain Markdown for writing the blog posts. Here's a quick example of a recent post: https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/ever-wanted-to-read-thousan...

Now all that's left is to find motivation to write more, but at least 90% of my time doesn't go into tinkering with custom fancy solutions, no matter how much I'd love that. Then again, nothing wrong with the alternatives either: 400 euros might be perfectly worth it for some, whereas working with static site generators or even custom CMSes would be a fun experience for others!

I'd check out Grav. https://getgrav.org/

Also, there is a CMS called Grav. Both Gravity and Grav use a very similar (but not identical) font for their logo.