Wordpress is one of those things I've plenty of experience with, but leave off my résumé and avoid mentioning to bosses and colleagues, so I won't get roped into that bullshit if it comes up—and it often does, sooner or later.
"Wordpress? I can take a look if you need me to, but I don't really know much about that. I think Fred said something about Wordpress the other day, maybe ask him...."
I've known others who confided they do the same thing. I think it's fairly common.
Plus the PHP market, and especially the Wordpress market, doesn't tend to do great in the compensation department (short of making and selling a successful plugin yourself, anyway) so I'm not exactly eager to put more weeks/months/years of experience in that column when it's not worth much.
The plugin documentation/architecture is a bit gnarly (at least from what I remember). That being said, I feel like most WordPress plugins are awful.
I've sometimes wondered if I could make a better version of X plugin, but I fear I'm missing something - like providing customer support or covering every version of WP.
The customer support and testing are key challenges. You have to be ready to help people with things that aren't even your fault if you don't want your rating on the marketplace(s) to go to shit. Plus you'll need to do lots of sales/ads/marketing to get your zero-ratings zero-downloads plugin off the ground, no matter how good it is. Writing a decent and useful plugin is helpful (almost wrote "necessary", but it's actually not—at least the "decent" part) but isn't sufficient to have a successful plugin.
The plugins are both awful and brilliant at the same time. Well, maybe not so much today. But back before I knew I what I was doing, back before Ruby On Rails really took off, it was pretty awesome to have a Wordpress blog, install a plugin, and suddenly you've got a fully fledged forum section on your site.
Of course the architecture and the mode of installation for those plugins used to be horrendous and fraught with so many problems.
You could look into making single purpose blocks. Then you can get listed in the block inserter upon search an site owners an install your block right from there. Some plugin developers made great inroads in active installs with this more friction less process. Once your block/plugin is installed you can provide links in the sidebar to more expansive plugins or premium versions.
>Plus the PHP market, and especially the Wordpress market, doesn't tend to do great in the compensation department
WordPress work certainly doesn't pay a lot, but for PHP in general there's a large cavern in the middle. You can get very, very high salaries/contract rates as someone experienced with PHP if you are extremely experienced with PHP - specifically because so few people are willing to stick with it to that point. There are just a lot of legacy systems in very large companies that run on it.
So if you already have the experience, it can be worth it. If you don't, then trying to get mid level or even "low senior" PHP jobs probably isn't worth it compared to another skillset.
Yeah, I know there exist high-paying PHP jobs, it's just that finding a PHP job that pays as much as Swift or C# or Java or Javascript or [insert almost anything else here] is usually relatively challenging.
I don't mean that there are zero people making good money in PHP, just that it requires flying a rather tricker and less-certain course to get there, than with other options.
I really might put PHP top-of-page—at least, in some contexts—if marketing myself as a high-priced contractor, for the reasons you mention... but, in hunting for ordinary jobs, I no longer even bother looking at PHP listings. Too much chaff, not enough wheat, and it's been like that for a decade or more. Just way easier to find an employer with compatible pay expectations, with other languages, if we're talking run-of-the-mill jobs. Shorter searches, more-consistent outcomes.
I'd happily put "completed a major Drupal version upgrade" on mine, if I'd ever successfully accomplished it. I think it was 6 --> 7; still gives me the willies to think about that attempt. Seeing that on a resume would be an immediate "wow, this person can handle a complex migration..."
I have spent a significant amount of time developing a product (developer tool) related to WordPress. I have put it on hold recently and I'm trying to evaluate if perhaps I should not do something else instead. I have had this feeling one year ago, that the WP development market may be shrinking and it was further amplified by ChatGPT release. Does anyone feel that way? Is the time still right to develop something, launch it in some 2 years and be sure that if the product has any potential, the market is still ripe in 5 -10 years from now?
"Wordpress? I can take a look if you need me to, but I don't really know much about that. I think Fred said something about Wordpress the other day, maybe ask him...."
I've known others who confided they do the same thing. I think it's fairly common.
Plus the PHP market, and especially the Wordpress market, doesn't tend to do great in the compensation department (short of making and selling a successful plugin yourself, anyway) so I'm not exactly eager to put more weeks/months/years of experience in that column when it's not worth much.