I think ghettoization, whether you agree with the characterization or not, is driven by how much devops / security work / handholding a deployed app needs. And

I think ghettoization, whether you agree with the characterization or not, is driven by how much devops / security work / handholding a deployed app needs. And wordpress needs a LOT of that. When the popular solution requires a ton of work, people will naturally look for alternatives that don't involve them being a sysadmin, which they may well not even have the skills to do.