In general when someone purchases or downloads a WordPress theme these days, there is this expectation that it will support all of the functionality WordPress provides, that it will be "customizable" from top-to-bottom and that it will work with any one of the 20,000+ plugins available in the plugin directory. We have fed those expectations by developing theme frameworks, endless theme options, shortcodes, metaboxes, etc. which has lead to an unsettling commonality in the majority of all new themes released by any theme provider today. My fear is that the element of "true creativity" is being sacrificed by these "expectations" and that the idea of creating an original theme without all the extras is somehow a "bad thing". Thoughts?

After developing and launching several premium WordPress plugins I feel the same way about the entire WordPress community.

At what point does every plugin just start running together and only adding weight to an installation? I've been shocked by the sheer number of plugins people have installed at any one time onto their site and the expectation of flawless performance with no conflicts when that just isn't a reality with so much going on in most fo these instances.

It's also interesting watching the saturation get worse by the day, meaning more people try to scale the sheer number of plugins or themes they launching instead of doing something that's truly valuable for a consumer instead of just asking for money.

I've grown pretty tired of the idea of selling WP themes. I still think it's a decent business to be in for recurring revenue, I wouldn't have been able to pay my way through college had it not been for WP, but it's not something that I'd enjoy doing longterm due to many of the things Jason mentioned. Most devs take a shotgun approach — create something super generic, add a ton of options & hope it pleases a wide range of people. I feel WordPress is partly to blame for this. WP has continually added more functionality & stacked it all on top. When was the last time you used the Links section? I'd like to see WP simplify things. A fresh WP installation should only have a "Posts" section. Then the dev. picks what functionality to support.

I get the feeling that the Wordpress community has been giving more attention to/requesting for features that facilitate the business model around premium themes and plugins. Why else would there be something like a "theme customizer" but no easy UI based way to create custom fields, taxonomies and posts?

Wordpress is popular because its easy to use. A person could code a theme, add a bunch of plugins and launch a fully functional site. I have nothing against that. But for people like me who want to create one-off unique websites with wordpress, there should be something like a WP Barebones, or WP custom installer.

Moving forward, i hope they focus more on the content management part of the CMS and not the bells and whistles part.

Wordpress was never sleek or fast. The coding makes the pages heavyweights on slower connections and computers.

THAT has all been worsened by the public's obsession with apps.

My 13-year-old has got into the "art" of Wordpress manipulation, and I am encouraging him to go forward.

For me (a long time HTML/XHTML and now HTML5 developer) is the clunky tag system.

Without a good guide, it takes ages to find which line of CSS alters what and there is seldom any logic to it.

Still, my lad now understands the fundamentals of not only how CSS can be written, but - because of his long hunts to find which line of CCS alters THAT colour, or THAT text size, he also understands how CSS fits into the larger matter of page design and rendition.

I remember reading a lot through 2011 about the rise of niche themes (themes made for a very specific type of website like restaurants or realtors or band splash pages). I thought this was a great idea, but most themes I've seen that seem to advertise themselves as niche themes still aim to support a wide variety of website types and just have a few custom features that match the niche (like a donation tracker for "nonprofit websites").

I still think that niche themes could start changing peoples' mindsets about a theme's flexibility, but I think that is fundamentally at odds with the commercial theme driven mindset which requires making lots of sales, and, therefore, remaining very flexible.

THat's so true. The Wordpress idea was/is a freeing notion allowing non-coders to create good looking web sites.

That "commercial" theme thing is what turns almost every WP site into a lookalike of thousands of others.

If "niche themes" really were that, then it could again be a great jump off place for non-coders.

I'm developing with wordpress for about 2 years and I agree with John. I've bought a few themes on themeforest for researching. There are so many themes with massive theme options. Yes, the theme is extreme flexible. But there is another theme which has the same options, maybe more options. And… it's red. And there it's… it's green.
So there are many many themes and all are nearly the same.

I hope some developers, and there are many very good developers, will reduce their massive theme options and be more special. As John said: "If "niche themes" really were that, then it could again be a great jump off place for non-coders."

(I hope you'll understand my english, it's not my main language :) Plz correct me, if something is really bad :D )