This is so ironic. Me, logging in to WordPress. I’d rather eat my socks… but I’ve been maintaining a website for an organization I support. It’s an old WordPress site and it’s always been a bit of a challenge. There are multiple people in the organization but no one really wants to dig around in WordPress to keep the site up. It’s just too frustrating.

Today I went to log in and I got the following error message.

Unknown error (invalid-json). Please contact an administrator for more info.

Hmm. I’m the administrator.

So I turn to Google and this is what I find —

I think the plugin is abandoned…

Ah yes, the joys of plugins. The plugin was useful when your site went live, but now the plugin developer has moved on, so now someone else must build a replacement plugin…or else you’re up the creek without a paddle.

I think there are two reasons why developers don’t see plugins as a major WordPress weakness.

1. Plugins allow developers to drop in functionality without building it themselves.
2. The developers are frequently not around to maintain the site years down the road when the plugin starts causing issues.

Website owners typically deal with designers or agency owners. Developers tell designers and agency owners that plugins are a good solution because they keep the upfront project costs down. If the designer or agency owner doesn’t know any better (eg. if they don’t deal with code themselves) they just trust the developer and accept plugin headaches as a cost of doing business.

Who wins in this situation? Nobody.

Not All Web Designers / Agencies Love WordPress

Plugins are a pain point for many web designers and agency owners. They inherit someone else’s WordPress nightmare because the last guy jumped ship (eg. didn’t want to deal with it any longer), so they’re stuck with the WordPress problems they didn’t create.

I’ll always agree that WordPress is a powerful tool in the hands of the right developer, but many web designers (and end users!) are happier without the headaches.

If you came here to read a solution to getting logged in to WordPress, my suggestion is to migrate to a platform that’s more fun to work with!

I’m migrating that old website over to a shiny new Typewriter site!