I've been using WordPress for over ten years. Built businesses on it. Recommended it to hundreds of beginners through my Dutch review site Start24, where I review hosting providers and help people make their first website. For most of that time, I genuinely loved the platform. Not just as a tool. But as an idea. The idea that anyone, anywhere, could publish something on the internet without asking permission.
But somewhere along the way, that love got complicated.
WordPress kept shipping features nobody asked for while ignoring the basics everyone needs. No built-in SEO. No analytics. No multilingual support. No two-factor authentication.
In 2026, a fresh WordPress install still can't do anything useful without bolting on five to seven plugins, each with its own settings screen, update cycle, and potential conflicts.
I watched this play out every week. Someone would follow my guide, pick a hosting provider, install WordPress, and then hit the real wall: now what? They'd need an SEO
plugin, an analytics plugin, a security plugin, maybe a forms plugin. Each one requires decisions they're not equipped to make. Which SEO plugin? Free or paid? What settings?
They came to build a website and ended up managing a small software stack instead.
I kept telling myself someone would fix this. The core team would eventually prioritize what users actually need over what's technically interesting. Year after year, that didn't happen.
The Breaking Point
Then came the Mullenweg situation. The lawsuits. Blocking WP Engine. Using wordpress.org as leverage in a business dispute. The ACF incident – taking over someone
else's plugin, renaming it, redirecting its users – was the moment everything crystallized.
This wasn't governance drama I could ignore. The platform I'd been recommending to beginners, the one I'd built my business around, was controlled by someone willing to use
that control as a weapon in a commercial fight. The wordpress.org plugin directory, which millions of sites depend on for updates, had become a tool of leverage.
I couldn't just complain about that on Twitter and move on. I had to do something.
Starting Quietly
I didn't announce anything. I didn't fork WordPress. I didn't write a manifesto. I sat down at my desk and asked myself a simple question: what would WordPress look like if it came with the basics built in? Not as a fork, not as a replacement – just as a theme that gives beginners everything they need to get started.
Then I started building.
What SailWP Actually Is
SailWP is a free GPL block theme that replaces five or more plugins out of the box. SEO with meta titles, descriptions, and structured data. Privacy-first analytics that run on your own dashboard – no cookies (aff), no consent popups, no data leaving your server. Two-factor authentication. Multilingual support. An AI page builder that generates full pages in seconds. And a setup wizard that takes you from download to a working website in about two minutes.
Power users can turn off all of these features since the theme is modular. If someone wants to use Yoast, they can use Yoast.
You get three editors: Gutenberg, Classic, and AI. Switch between them freely depending on what you're comfortable with.The total frontend payload is 94 KB. That's CSS, JavaScript, and fonts combined. For context: Astra loads around 160 KB. Kadence about 220 KB. Divi comes in at 700 KB.
Elementor at 800 KB. SailWP ships everything – SEO, analytics, 2FA, AI builder – in less
than what most themes need for styling alone.
It's free. GPL v2+. No premium tier, no upsell, no email gate, no strings. It works alongside WooCommerce, Elementor, Kadence Blocks, and other major plugins.
And it's deliberately not on wordpress.org. Given the governance situation, I don't trust that review process to remain stable. That's a personal judgment call, not a technical one.
Reddit Roasted Me
When I first posted SailWP on r/WordPress, it got downvoted hard. I read every comment. Some of the criticism was fair – the landing page was in Dutch only, I had an email gate on the download, and I hadn't documented plugin compatibility. Those were good calls, and I fixed all of them.
But a lot of the pushback was philosophical, and that's where it got interesting.
What I Changed — And What I Didn't
What I fixed based on feedback:
The landing page is now in English at Sail.com. The download is one click, no account needed. I confirmed compatibility with WooCommerce, Elementor, Kadence Blocks, and other popular plugins.
What I stood my ground on:
“This should be a plugin, not a theme.” I hear that, and I respect the principle. Separation of concerns is real. But that principle serves developers. It doesn't serve the person who just wants a website and doesn't know what a plugin is. Wix and Squarespace proved years ago that baking the basics in is what regular people want. I think WordPress can offer that too.
If you switch themes, your SEO data stays. It's stored in standard post meta, not locked into theme options. And since the theme is modular you're free to turn off specific features.
“Put it on GitHub.” I'm not a developer who works in public repos. I'm a marketer and entrepreneur who builds things. The code is GPL. The ZIP is a direct download. You can read every line. If that's a dealbreaker, I understand.
What WordPress Can Be
I'm not saying this is what WordPress has to be. Just what it can be.
Wix and Squarespace proved there's a massive market for “basics built in.” WordPress can serve that market too – without losing its open-source soul. The two aren't mutually exclusive. You can have a powerful, extensible platform that also works out of the box for someone who's never heard of a plugin.
I still love WordPress. I still use it every day. I still recommend it to beginners. I run my own sites on it. I just want it to be better for the people who need it most – the ones who don't have a developer on speed dial and don't know what “separation of concerns” means.
SailWP is one person's answer to that. A solo project from the Netherlands, built out of genuine frustration and genuine affection for what WordPress could be. Others will have different answers. Some will build forks. Some will build better plugins. Some will push for changes in core. That's the beauty of open source – there's room for all of it.
If you want to try it, it's at SailWP.com. Download it, upload it, see if it fits. I'd genuinely like to hear what you think – especially if you're the kind of person who usually reads articles like this and thinks “this isn't for me.” It might not be. But if it helps even one person skip the plugin maze and just get their site online, it was worth building.
