Why I Ended Up Building a Custom CMS Instead of Using WordPress

I Was Spending More Time Choosing Plugins Than Building My Website

When I started working on Cordinant, I assumed I would use WordPress.

The plan seemed simple: build my software products, use WordPress for the blog and product pages, and avoid spending time on infrastructure.

For a while, that still looked like the sensible choice.

Then I noticed how I was actually spending my evenings.

Instead of building pages or working on products, I was comparing SEO plugins, custom field tools, media extensions, redirect managers, and different ways to connect articles with product pages.

None of those plugins were necessarily bad. Most were solving real problems for a much broader range of websites.

The problem was that Cordinant was becoming more specialised.

I wanted articles and products to share categories, SEO metadata, media, clean URLs, and direct relationships. A product page could recommend an article explaining a feature, while an article could point naturally to a related product.

The admin workflow was also becoming important. I did not just need somewhere to enter content. I wanted the editor, media library, database structure, SEO fields, and frontend to evolve together.

At some point, writing a few hundred lines of PHP started to feel more reasonable than continuing to adapt several separate tools.

So I began building a small CMS around my own workflow.

It has not made the project simpler.

I no longer spend as much time checking plugin compatibility, but I now own the routing, database decisions, media handling, SEO implementation, documentation, bugs, and maintenance.

There is no plugin author to blame when something breaks.

Cordinant is also still unfinished. I continue changing the content model, redesigning parts of the admin area, and discovering decisions I would make differently if I started again.

I would still use WordPress for many client websites, marketing sites, and projects involving several non-technical editors.

For this particular project, though, complete control gradually became more useful than general flexibility.

Have you ever reached the point where adapting an existing platform felt like more work than building the smaller system you actually needed?