The WP e/acc Manifesto
Permissionless innovation at internet scale
Core Thesis
WordPress powers 43% of the web not because of central planning, but because of permissionless innovation. Anyone can build a plugin. Anyone can fork a theme. Anyone can spin up a site in minutes and start publishing, selling, creating.
This is the closest thing the internet has to a truly decentralized creative economy—and we should push it further, faster.
We call this WP e/acc: WordPress effective accelerationism. Not a political stance. A building philosophy.
The Principles
1. Ship relentlessly
The WordPress repository has 60,000+ plugins not because of quality gates but because the barrier to contribution is low. Keep it low. Let the market—users, reviews, active installs—sort signal from noise. Shipping beats planning. Feedback beats assumptions. Version 1.0 is a starting point, not a destination.
2. Democratize commerce
WooCommerce lets anyone become a merchant without asking Shopify's permission or paying platform fees before making their first dollar. Extend this. Make payments, subscriptions, memberships, and digital goods trivially easy to launch. Lower the barrier until commerce becomes a default capability, not a specialized skill.
3. Resist platform capture
Every hosted builder—Wix, Squarespace, Webflow—trades freedom for convenience. They own your site. They set the rules. They can change pricing, features, or terms whenever they want. WordPress is messy, sometimes frustrating, often chaotic. And that's the price of owning your own stack. The mess is the point.
4. Embrace AI augmentation
Let LLMs write plugin boilerplate, generate blocks, translate themes, optimize queries. The "artisanal hand-coded" ethos served its era. Now: leverage machines to ship 10x faster. The craft is in knowing what to build, not typing every line yourself.
5. Complexity is a moat, not a bug
The WordPress learning curve filters for builders who want control. People who learn WordPress learn to think about hosting, databases, performance, and security. Don't sand down the edges until it's just another walled garden with a "simple" interface and invisible constraints.
6. Forks are healthy
ClassicPress exists. Flavor exists. Alternative block editors exist. This isn't fragmentation—it's evolution through competition. May the best runtime win. The ecosystem is stronger when ideas compete.
The WP e/acc Builder
There's a certain type of person who thrives in this ecosystem. You might recognize them:
Bias to action
They launch MVPs on wordpress.org before writing documentation. Version 0.1 ships while others are still debating architecture.
Distrust of gatekeepers
They're skeptical of consolidation, wary of scope creep in core, suspicious of any move that reduces ecosystem diversity.
Commercial pragmatism
They sell premium plugins and themes without apologizing for profit. They know sustainable businesses create sustainable software.
Technical omnivory
They mix PHP, React, headless setups, AI code generation—whatever solves the problem. Dogma loses to pragmatism.
Long-term conviction
They bet on WordPress outlasting VC-funded platforms because open source compounds while startups pivot or die.
Community over credentials
They value GitHub commits and support forum reputation over job titles. Contribution is the credential.
The Tensions
We don't pretend this philosophy is without tradeoffs.
Quality vs. velocity
More plugins means more garbage. We accept this tradeoff. Natural selection works if we let it.
Backward compatibility vs. progress
WordPress carries 20 years of technical debt. Some of it should be burned. Most shouldn't—stability is a feature for millions of sites that just need to keep running.
Automattic's dual role
They fund core development and compete with ecosystem players. This is uncomfortable but probably sustainable. We watch it carefully.
The Call
Build the plugin nobody asked permission to build.
Fork the theme that's "good enough."
Charge money for your work.
Use AI to move faster.
Don't wait for Gutenberg to stabilize—ship around it.
The open web isn't guaranteed. It's maintained by people who keep choosing to build on systems they control.
Keep choosing.
We build tools for this philosophy
The Ultimate series is WP e/acc in practice: focused plugins that solve real problems, built for performance, sold without apology.