Except they dont. Leveraging 30 plugins makes the sites a constant hack target and perform piss poor in SEO page speed test, etc. That lets fix it with plugins attitude works for entry level sites, but if you actually are profitable and competitive its more trouble than hiring someone to build a lean site, even if using WordPress for content in the backend. Less is more.
By the time you've reached 30 plugins of actual required functionality that effects page speed and existing caching solutions can't help you then yeah you probably need to build it custom, but there's a big old gulf of time before you reach that point where WP will serve just fine.
What's the alternative? I am not a creative type and I've been desperately trying to find something like a CMS that is simple enough that I don't have to think about it and featured enough that I can have things like personal profiles behind a login (for a brownie troop). WordPress seems like the same nightmare it was when I first looked at it however long ago but so do all the rest. Is there something better?
processwire.com. You have to build your front-end pages using whatever html/css template you want, but moving over to Processwire from wordpress was a breath of fresh air.
Thank you! I'll take a look. I've been playing with Ghost for the last 30 minutes (based on a comment below) and that might be my move but I'll definitely look at this too.
