I have been using WordPress for quite a while now, both for my own websites, (whether personal or commercial) and in my teaching.
It is really useful, and really good.
But: since v3 when they started introducing AUTOUPDATE, WordPress has KILLED MY WEBSITE so many times, by updating itself when either a theme or plugin I was using wasn’t ready for such an update, or when the update caused mayhem on my server and half of it ended up ‘owned’ by Apache and unwritable except over Shell, logged in as root, etc etc., and simply a BLANK page to any visitor – with the backend broken, too, only fixable by uploading a complete replacement from external backup.
I have lost count of the HOURS of my time that have been wasted returning a website to what it was yesterday, after WordPress had destroyed it.
I have, henceforth, as a matter of course, ALWAYS added to wp-config.php, on all sites (covering all bases):
define( ‘WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE’, false );
define( ‘AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED’, true );