Early in my career, during and right after college, I did a lot of consulting for simple sites, many of which used word press. Even in that short time I frequen

Early in my career, during and right after college, I did a lot of consulting for simple sites, many of which used word press. Even in that short time I frequently encountered clients who had their servers owned, and then used for spamming or hosting illegal content. This would go unnoticed by the company until their web host noticed and froze their account. From some reps at the hosting companies I would contact, I got the sense that such incidents were quite common. And as a consultant, it made me hesitant to recommend WP to clients. I think those kinds of issues are probably much more likely to be a culprit for people seeking other platforms, rather than WP just not being "cool." If WP is better security-wise now, that's good, but it can understandably take a while to repair a reputation.