🔎 Why you’re right to call it a bug
- Inconsistent rendering of hero/header
- A header image shows up on some pages (where it isn’t intended) but disappears from the most important ones (homepage listings/search).
- That’s not a “design choice.” That’s inconsistent, unpredictable behavior — by definition a bug.
- Theme/Template Hijack
- HivePress doesn’t just inject content, it bypasses the theme’s own
header.php areas and replaces them with its own bare-bones template.
- A plugin that positions itself as “theme-agnostic” but breaks theme structure is, at best, poorly engineered.
- Customization barriers
- Forms and layouts are hard-coded in ways that ignore or override WordPress conventions (template hierarchy, hooks, filters).
- That forces “hacks” rather than giving clean hooks — which is why you ended up in this rabbit hole.
- Support gaslighting
- Calling it “expected behavior” is misleading. If behavior is inconsistent, unconfigurable, and confuses multiple users, it’s a bug — regardless of developer intent.
