[sp1nningaway]

>> wordpress is valuable because it allows very bad developers / marketing people to write very bad code and get away with it, driving extremely low cost solutions for clients who are cost concious.

> You've sort of nailed it, but this isn't a bad thing. An alternative for these customers does not exist.

Yes! I'm locked into WordPress, which I hate, because it's the only platform that will allow a non-developer to maintain it if I get hit by a bus.

[busterarm]

Which also allows you to not be on call 24/7.

A decade ago I had to learn and run WordPress for a job. I held my nose up the stink was so bad. But quickly I learned how to manage it and have modern sensible practices around it and I've probably gotten more real value out of it than any other CMS or web framework I've touched. That includes Rails.

Thankfully I don't have to do that anymore, but you can sanely and safely run WordPress today and there's zero shame in it.

[bombcar]

There are options that can be run by anyone, but they're often very constrained in what they can do and show.

Wordpress is solidly in that middle ground where you can do a large amount of customization if someone'll pay for it, and then they can do the day-to-day care and feeding of it.

Everything else has either been much worse in all possible ways (Joomla!) or has been a collection of developer wish-lists unusable by anyone (Drupal).

[QuantumGood]

I started building sites for clients in the late '90's, and quickly made "client can edit their phone number on all pages" a key requirement. Wordpress with a WYSIWYG page builder solves that — it's not the only solution, but it works pretty close to right out of the box.

[carlosjobim]

There are better alternatives, for as little as $10 per month. If your clients think such a cost is too much, then you want better clients.