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Why WordPress theming sucks

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Re: Why WordPress theming sucks

#11

Post by rickmb »

calvinf wrote: post #4
byoung2 wrote: post #2

I bet the developers have thought of rewriting it using OOP and an MVC pattern, but all current plugins and themes would have to be rewritten as well. It's not so bad, since you'd only need the top few dozen plugins and themes rewritten to get traction. I'd be willing to help out if anyone here is brave enough to try a rewrite!

WordPress is abandoning support for PHP4 and MySQL 4 in version 3.1. This will allow them to incorporate many of the features in PHP5 they haven't been able to do yet such as stronger OOP. http://wordpress.org/news/2010/07/eol-for-php4-and-mysql4/ It doesn't need a rewrite. Instead, work with the many brilliant devs who have been improving it for years and know it inside-and-out -- including its flaws and areas for i…

Oh, come on. WordPress could have started providing a decent API eons ago. They don't care. Or they fundamentally don't see there's anything wrong with spaghetti code and inconsistent API's.

The only reason they are abandoning PHP4 because it has become so rare they can't test against it anymore, not because they want to improve anything. Remember this crap: http://ma.tt/2007/07/on-php/ ?

Which is typical for WordPress: one of the most successful companies to be built on PHP, and all they do is bitch about it and use their influence on a part of the community to hold it back instead of contributing, like Facebook, Digg and such.

Re: Why WordPress theming sucks

#12

Post by CyrilMazur »

josefresco wrote: post #10

So let me get this straight. Some developer/guy spends 5 minutes trying to theme a WordPress website for himself and decides to write an article bitching about it instead of actually reading some documentation or the thousands of Google results from countless other developers who have done the same and much more? The first commenter pretty much sums up how much this guy knows about WP themeing (hint: nothing). This a…

And what are this so-called thousands of Google results from countless other developers who have done the same and much more? Dirty workarounds that shouldn't be necessary if WordPress had been made properly in the first place. That's only what the author says: although WordPress rocks to propel blogs, it's far from being made of good code.

Re: Why WordPress theming sucks

#13

Post by Xurinos »

I don't want to hijack the intent of this submission too much, but I am really curious about a question burning on my mind. I can't help but notice the sheer number of WordPress mentions on HN and other sites lately, and while a paranoid part of me wonders if this is something of a marketing blitz, I want to try to get an unbiased opinion:

Is WordPress the way to go these days for blogging?

How does it compare to Blogger? What other reasonable options are there, and how do they compare?

Edit: And how does it compare to posterous?

Re: Why WordPress theming sucks

#14

Post by CyrilMazur »

Xurinos wrote: post #13

I don't want to hijack the intent of this submission too much, but I am really curious about a question burning on my mind. I can't help but notice the sheer number of WordPress mentions on HN and other sites lately, and while a paranoid part of me wonders if this is something of a marketing blitz, I want to try to get an unbiased opinion: Is WordPress the way to go these days for blogging? How does it compare to Blo…

I don't know much about Blogger, but as it's a SAAS, how customisable is it? Can you host your own PHP pages, can you do really what you want with the theme?

I think there are differences to consider between hosted blogs and blog scripts you can actually install on your own server and customise the way you want.

Am I right?

Re: Why WordPress theming sucks

#15

Post by CyrilMazur »

calvinf wrote: post #5

#1) True. It does not use an MVC paradigm. That's not the way it was designed, and they're not able to make it MVC w/o breaking backward compatibility with the huge ecosystem of plugins and themes that currently exist. #2) True, and I agree. The function naming could be improved. If you don't know what the function does, look it up in the codex or the source code. The documentation could improve, too, but one of the…

For my defence, I also lead you to the get_search_form() function that does NOT return the search form as a variable, but that really writes it as HTML

http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_search_for...

So what, don't have I the right to bitch around WP naming for functions?

Re: Why WordPress theming sucks

#16

Post by calvinf »

rickmb wrote: post #11
calvinf wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WordPress is abandoning support for PHP4 and MySQL 4 in version 3.1. This will allow them to incorporate many of the features in PHP5 they haven't been able to do yet such as stronger OOP. http://wordpress.org/news/2010/07/eol-for-php4-and-mysql4/ It doesn't need a rewrite. Instead, work with the many brilliant devs who have been improving it for years and know it inside-and-out -- including its flaws and areas for i…

Oh, come on. WordPress could have started providing a decent API eons ago. They don't care. Or they fundamentally don't see there's anything wrong with spaghetti code and inconsistent API's. The only reason they are abandoning PHP4 because it has become so rare they can't test against it anymore, not because they want to improve anything. Remember this crap: http://ma.tt/2007/07/on-php/ ? Which is typical for WordPre…

As of writing this post, in WordPress's directory there are 11,351 plugins and 1,239 themes.

Source: http://wordpress.org/extend/

I'd call the API a success: it has thousands of authors releasing thousands of plugins and themes and this is only the code that's been released open-source.

Re: Why WordPress theming sucks

#17

Post by tariq »

CyrilMazur wrote: post #14
Xurinos wrote: post #13

I don't want to hijack the intent of this submission too much, but I am really curious about a question burning on my mind. I can't help but notice the sheer number of WordPress mentions on HN and other sites lately, and while a paranoid part of me wonders if this is something of a marketing blitz, I want to try to get an unbiased opinion: Is WordPress the way to go these days for blogging? How does it compare to Blo…

I don't know much about Blogger, but as it's a SAAS, how customisable is it? Can you host your own PHP pages, can you do really what you want with the theme? I think there are differences to consider between hosted blogs and blog scripts you can actually install on your own server and customise the way you want. Am I right?

you're correct. the differences between wordpress and blogger are vast. you've mentioned the big ones already.

blogger is...

- easy to setup

- hard to customize

- limited in terms of features / plugins (if any)

- hosted as a service

Re: Why WordPress theming sucks

#18

Post by slouch »

CyrilMazur wrote: post #12
josefresco wrote: post #10

So let me get this straight. Some developer/guy spends 5 minutes trying to theme a WordPress website for himself and decides to write an article bitching about it instead of actually reading some documentation or the thousands of Google results from countless other developers who have done the same and much more? The first commenter pretty much sums up how much this guy knows about WP themeing (hint: nothing). This a…

And what are this so-called thousands of Google results from countless other developers who have done the same and much more? Dirty workarounds that shouldn't be necessary if WordPress had been made properly in the first place. That's only what the author says: although WordPress rocks to propel blogs, it's far from being made of good code.

you can rewrite a lot of the WP functionality by writing a plugin. if your plugin is popular, it's modifications may be absorbed into the core software that is distributed at wordpress.org. you're calling open source development dirty workarounds.

Re: Why WordPress theming sucks

#19

Post by CyrilMazur »

slouch wrote: post #18
CyrilMazur wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what are this so-called thousands of Google results from countless other developers who have done the same and much more? Dirty workarounds that shouldn't be necessary if WordPress had been made properly in the first place. That's only what the author says: although WordPress rocks to propel blogs, it's far from being made of good code.

you can rewrite a lot of the WP functionality by writing a plugin. if your plugin is popular, it's modifications may be absorbed into the core software that is distributed at wordpress.org. you're calling open source development dirty workarounds.

If it worked like that, WordPress would already be OOPed and MVCed isn't it?

Re: Why WordPress theming sucks

#20

Post by Xurinos »

tariq wrote: post #17
CyrilMazur wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know much about Blogger, but as it's a SAAS, how customisable is it? Can you host your own PHP pages, can you do really what you want with the theme? I think there are differences to consider between hosted blogs and blog scripts you can actually install on your own server and customise the way you want. Am I right?

you're correct. the differences between wordpress and blogger are vast. you've mentioned the big ones already. blogger is... - easy to setup - hard to customize - limited in terms of features / plugins (if any) - hosted as a service

How about vs posterous? (Sorry, I should have included it in my first post, but I forgot the name.)
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