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Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

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Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#21

Post by eloisius »

pmarreck wrote: post #19
westoque wrote: post #4

I hope we again see the value of using systems like Wordpress for it’s simplicity in getting a blog/website setup and easily modify content. Lately most of the modern marketing websites I see is built using gatsby and next.js. Having been talking to different content/marketing teams, they hate it so much because of the complexity it brings. Editing content? Sign in to this headless CRM app, want a form? Go sign in to…

Have you ever tried to customize or add functionality to Wordpress? Because if it’s anything like Drupal or other PHP based tech of a certain era, it’s hell

It is hell, but there are also millions of contractors that still sit in that webmaster space between designer and developer who will do it cheaply.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#22

Post by manigandham »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #11
westoque wrote: post #4

I hope we again see the value of using systems like Wordpress for it’s simplicity in getting a blog/website setup and easily modify content. Lately most of the modern marketing websites I see is built using gatsby and next.js. Having been talking to different content/marketing teams, they hate it so much because of the complexity it brings. Editing content? Sign in to this headless CRM app, want a form? Go sign in to…

Is that because WordPress is simple , though? There are similar CMSes you can use with e.g. Gatsby. They’re just a glorified build systems, after all — there’s nothing inherently complex about the content management experience. And on the flip side, it’s possible to load up WordPress with enough plugins that it becomes a nightmare to use. I think we see people choose WordPress because it’s familiar, popular, battle-t…

Yes because Wordpress includes frontend rendering (of both the actual pages and the backend admin) by default. This means you get working HTML powered by dynamic content out of the box, and it keeps working as content changes without needing constant builds for static sites.

I see the benefits of modern component-driven frontend systems but I think the better opportunity would be to integrate this cleanly into existing server-side engines rather than try to recreate the backend entirely or disassemble it down to such low-level build steps.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#23

Post by Something1234 »

pmarreck wrote: post #19
westoque wrote: post #4

I hope we again see the value of using systems like Wordpress for it’s simplicity in getting a blog/website setup and easily modify content. Lately most of the modern marketing websites I see is built using gatsby and next.js. Having been talking to different content/marketing teams, they hate it so much because of the complexity it brings. Editing content? Sign in to this headless CRM app, want a form? Go sign in to…

Have you ever tried to customize or add functionality to Wordpress? Because if it’s anything like Drupal or other PHP based tech of a certain era, it’s hell

add_shortcode is incredible. It's probably my favorite part of wordpress, and writing a plugin is so easy, just a single file zipped up or scp'd. Especially with custom post types or adding a new table.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#24

Post by astrowilliam »

e2le wrote: post #15

I'm disappointed by their choice in site design and I'm sure it'll be infuriating to interact with for those with disabilities. It's a real wasted opportunity to use this instead of something more battle tested and fit for purpose such as the design used by the gov.uk site. https://www.gov.uk/ https://www.gov.uk/guidance/government-design-principles/

I see no infinite scrolling on https://whitehouse.gov/ It clearly has an end point and a footer. Also, the "briefing room" has pagination.

Not sure what pages you are looking at.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#25

Post by throwawayboise »

Angostura wrote: post #16
steviedotboston wrote: post #3

> Political affiliations aside, I think we can all breathe a bit easier today knowing they didn’t choose Drupal. Strongly disagree. Drupal is a great CMS and there's a reason the government uses it so extensively.

I'm pretty sure the Obama administration used Drupal 6. Current Drupal is rather a different beast

Drupal 6 was kind of a mess technically, but it had the best ecosystem of contributed modules.

Drupal 7 lost some modules, and Drupal 8+ lost a lot more.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#26

Post by nulbyte »

steviedotboston wrote: post #3

> Political affiliations aside, I think we can all breathe a bit easier today knowing they didn’t choose Drupal. Strongly disagree. Drupal is a great CMS and there's a reason the government uses it so extensively.

Agreed. I love Drupal, and hate WordPress. It seems like Drupal module developers are more interested in solving trivial problems so they can focus on the bigger ones, while WordPress plugin developers are more interested in making a buck with a trivial solution.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#27

Post by mattmanser »

pmarreck wrote: post #19
westoque wrote: post #4

I hope we again see the value of using systems like Wordpress for it’s simplicity in getting a blog/website setup and easily modify content. Lately most of the modern marketing websites I see is built using gatsby and next.js. Having been talking to different content/marketing teams, they hate it so much because of the complexity it brings. Editing content? Sign in to this headless CRM app, want a form? Go sign in to…

Have you ever tried to customize or add functionality to Wordpress? Because if it’s anything like Drupal or other PHP based tech of a certain era, it’s hell

Yes, a few months ago, it was ridiculously easy. It literally took me 20 minutes to customize how the side bar was working and embed some new dynamic content. I even inherited off a parent theme so any updates to the theme wouldn't over-ride my changes.

I've never even written much PHP in the past. I even added it into the the theme editor so the client could change the text/etc. themselves.

Not sure what you did, but you clearly did it wrong if you think it's hard. It just worked.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#28

Post by astrowilliam »

KayL wrote: post #13

I'm surprised they dropped the IE supports. (It's failed on my testing, and the CSS syntax they used shown they never think about it.) For their 2% rules, they shouldn't drop the minors. https://github.com/uswds/uswds/issues/3877 This is a super clean and simple feature website. They could offer supports very widely, and the cost won't be high! (I'm a web developer)

IE11 will soon be a security hazard and not worth the effort to code for.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#29

Post by nkozyra »

lemonberry wrote: post #12
nkozyra wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reason might be familiarity. Or inertia. Or breadth of available resources to work with it, as you mentioned. Or all of the above. And that might be a good enough reason, but to imply it's the best technical option warrants some skepticism.

I'm not asking this to be snarky, but by what metric would you decide something was the best technical option?

There's no single metric, but in particular I believe that inherent inefficiency with WordPress design will incur more cost to scale, as an example.

Not to mention things little security issues.

I don't have an agenda against WordPress and very often when people ask me what they should use for simple projects I say "just use WordPress."

My rule of thumb is that will probably be alright for a simple, small project, but will have to grow up to something else to scale reasonably.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#30

Post by KayL »

pmarreck wrote: post #19
westoque wrote: post #4

I hope we again see the value of using systems like Wordpress for it’s simplicity in getting a blog/website setup and easily modify content. Lately most of the modern marketing websites I see is built using gatsby and next.js. Having been talking to different content/marketing teams, they hate it so much because of the complexity it brings. Editing content? Sign in to this headless CRM app, want a form? Go sign in to…

Have you ever tried to customize or add functionality to Wordpress? Because if it’s anything like Drupal or other PHP based tech of a certain era, it’s hell

Add feature to WP should be easier than Drupal. In WP, you only write pure PHP. (Lack of APIs for common elements) But in Drupal, mostly you have to interact with Drupal APIs.
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