# Why I’m Moving Away from Power Platform and Back to Modern WordPress

- Link: https://matthummel.com/why-im-moving-away-from-power-platform-and-back-to-modern-wordpress/
- Published: 2026-09-02T05:05:11+00:00
- Author: Matthew Hummel

After nearly five years of enterprise Power Platform work, I'm pivoting my content
and personal projects back to modern custom WordPress development.

For the last nearly five years, a big part of my day-to-day work revolved around
the Microsoft Power Platform. Over the past few months, I began writing about it
here—sharing practical fixes for canvas app delegation, complex formulas, SharePoint
integrations, and automated flows.

However, the more I documented those enterprise processes, the more I realized my
core passion wasn't in low-code platforms. While internal business tools solve real
corporate problems, my true technical curiosity has always belonged to full-stack
web development.

Because of that, I'm making a deliberate shift: moving away from Power Platform 
content and returning to my roots in **modern WordPress engineering, open-web architectures,
and custom personal builds.**

Here is why I'm making the change—and what I'll be sharing next.

---

## 1. Five Years in Managed Ecosystems vs. Open-Web Control

Spending nearly five years inside the Microsoft ecosystem taught me a lot about 
rapid enterprise app delivery. But working exclusively within a vendor's walled 
garden introduces hard limits on custom execution, data flow, and long-term platform
control.

Returning my focus to custom web development (especially modern setups using Roots/
Sage, Blade templates, Vite, and automated CI/CD pipelines) brings back the exact
aspects of engineering I enjoy most:

 * **Total architectural control** over data flow, markup, and application logic.
 * **Direct performance tuning** at the code level without vendor-imposed rules.
 * **True open-source independence** without licensing shifts or platform lock-in.

---

## 2. Modern WordPress Is a Superior Developer Experience

There is a common myth that WordPress development is stuck in the past. In reality,
modern custom theme and plugin development uses a toolchain that matches top-tier
web application engineering:

 * **Clean templating** using Blade and modern PHP features.
 * **Instant asset compilation** powered by Vite.
 * **Streamlined developer workflows** (using tools like Cursor and scoped MCP integrations)
   that handle repetitive boilerplate, freeing up time for architecture, accessibility,
   and speed optimizations.

Stepping back into custom WordPress builds reminded me how powerful, clean, and 
rewarding web engineering can be when done with modern tools.

---

## 3. Building for the Web (Not Just Enterprise Specs)

Internal enterprise tools naturally focus on admin forms, internal workflows, and
corporate data entry. They serve a functional purpose, but they rarely allow for
creative experimentation with modern web APIs, public-facing user experiences, or
open-source software.

I want to spend my energy building and shipping personal web projects, such as:

 * Lightweight, speed-first custom WordPress plugins.
 * Modern theme starter stacks.
 * Full-stack experiments combining external APIs, modern UI, and AI workflows.

---

## What Changes Here

 * **No new Power Platform posts.** The tutorials I published over the last few 
   months will remain online for anyone who needs them, but my focus is moving on.
 * **Deep-dive WordPress content.** Expect practical guides on custom PHP architectures,
   Sage/Blade workflows, performance strategies, and modern developer tooling.
 * **Build logs.** I’ll be sharing the raw, honest engineering process behind the
   personal projects and tools I ship.

It took five years in the low-code world to realize how much I missed custom web
development, and I’m excited to be back in my element. If you want the longer backstory,
from college webmaster to WP Engine to Power Apps, I wrote it up in [coming back to WordPress](https://matthummel.com/coming-back-to-wordpress-why-im-all-in-again/).

Are you building for the open web or refining your own dev stack right now? Let's
connect in the comments below.

_Originally posted on [DEV.to](https://dev.to/matthummeldev/why-im-moving-away-from-power-platform-and-back-to-modern-wordpress-15i2)._