I was using the standard 2023 theme. I was just trying to put the category list and archive list at the bottom of the page near the footer. It wanted me to create some sections or do alignment or something. The entire process was confusing.
I was trying to get the categories on the left side of the footer and the archives on the right side. I wanted them somewhat centered in the page so they looked decent. The columns or whatever it was I had to create were messing everything up. The section that was holding the categories was so small it wouldn’t allow the text to fit, so the category names were just word wrapping around making on entire mess. Any category name larger than about 6 characters would just keep wrapping down through several lines even though there was a huge amount of blank space on the page to hold the text.
I set several options where it was saying the category section would be sized based on contents but that wasn’t working. Apparently there was a parent container that wasn’t the correct size or something. Then there were huge gasps between the category and archive sections. Categories was on the far left side of the page, and archives was in the center of the page. I wanted them both to be centered. When I finally got that working the text was also centered, instead of being left-aligned so the entire thing was yet again a mess. I didn’t want the text centered, I just wanted the category and archive widgets centered horizontally.
Finally when I looked at the left side of the page there was a huge hierarchy of sections or groups all going several layers deep. It was way too confusing. I tried clicking and dragging a few of the sections to a higher level in the hierarchy and then deleting the stuff I didn’t need, but it turned into a massive mess.
I deleted everything and completely started over but the same thing happened again. After wasting more than 3 hours just trying to align the footer I said screw it and uninstalled it. If I can’t even get the footer aligned, there’s no way I can use WordPress anymore.
I used to be able to just create a category and archive widget and then put them where I wanted them on the page and be done with it. The theme has specific locations you could drop them. It took 15 mins tops, and I had my site up and running.
You said there is a large learning curve, while I feel like that completely destroys what WordPress used to be. You used to be able to install and set everything up without any coding experience. Now you have to have some understanding of how sections, groups and other things work which are similar to a flexgrid or flexbox layout.
In an attempt to add all these features, it’s doing nothing but complicating what used to be one of the easiest ways to build a website. The entire point of using WordPress is because it was easy. If someone needs to learn all these flexbox/flexgrid type layouts, they might as well just build their own website.
