Don't be fooled! This reporter has published propaganda to make people think that strategic and intelligent thinking will lead to a successful WordPress update. In reality, there is no logic or reason that can prevent disaster, you are at the mercy of chaos and a hateful god determined to destroy your will to live.
To describe this in more depth, one of the plugins simply wasn't able to be downloaded without paying for another license which prevented the entire site moving from PHP 7.3 to 8.1.
There was another plugin for forms that showed a "This form is temporarily unavailable." error to website visitors. This plugin author has decided that not only will it stop working- it will break your site's functionality. After running a standard plugin update in the WordPress admin- it removed functionality and demanded additional payment. The plugin did not indicate that a new license would be needed before updating, and thanks to caching- you couldn't tell the form was broken on the front end!
Also- let's talk about caching! Caching for WordPress is a complete mess. Sure this is not exclusive to WP, but it takes the cake.
Why? Because hosting companies' "Managed WordPress" plans which are an attractive option for hosting companies because it lets them set very aggressive caching policies to squeeze more capacity out of cheap crappy shared servers. This is why "Managed WordPress" hosting is almost always run on shared servers- even WPEngine, one of the more well known and much more expensive services, is all run on shared servers. I confirmed this via their sales team who was harassing a client about their website's monthly traffic limit. They said that the overages cause "performance issues". After confirming the server isn't a VPS (although they price it like it is), I asked if "we should be worried about other sites slowing down our site because WPEngine uses shared hosting". They left the client alone after that.
WP is frustrating, but I take a deep breath and think about how that WP money is helping pay for an upcoming vacation. So... thanks WP?