Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

pagely.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 371 posts

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#91

Post by e2le »

pottertheotter wrote: post #78
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'm not sure what I'm supposed to get from looking at gov.uk. For me, it was a negative experience, and I'm glad it's not used in the US.

It might be a negative experience for you but I believe sacrificing elegance in favour of accessibility is a fair trade to make when building something that will be used by a diverse group of people.

Accessible design is good design. Everything we build should be as inclusive, legible and readable as possible. If we have to sacrifice elegance - so be it. We’re building for needs, not audiences. We’re designing for the whole country, not just the ones who are used to using the web. The people who most need our services are often the people who find them hardest to use. Let’s think about those people from the start.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/government-design-principles#thi...

In my personal experience however, using gov.uk has being a mostly pleasant experience and don't much care for opinionated "elegant" design.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#92

Post by [deleted] »

falcolas wrote: post #61
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…

Simplicity? Perhaps in its use, but not the code. The code and hosting requirements are, frankly, Frankenstein's monster levels of frightening. ~~You have to~~ WP expect you to install it such that it can modify its install folders - all of them. Security-fucking-nightmare. It will use incoming requests to trigger "cron" jobs (which can include self-upgrades), via a non-loopback HTTP request. It falls apart under any…

[deleted]

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#93

Post by rapind »

falcolas wrote: post #85
splatzone wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WordPress is not without its design flaws, some of which make sense from the point of view of helping non-techies run their own sites (such as making updates easy.) But as someone who has built 100s of sites with WordPress I feel the need to defend it on a few points here: > You have to let it modify its install. Security-fucking-nightmare. You don't have to do this, you can set up sane permissions and use the wp cli…

> You don't have to do this I updated my original comment here. > A good practice is to set up your own cron job on the server and disable the internal cron in your wp-config.php Defaults matter. And when I was working on it, this wasn't well documented anywhere. If it is now, great. It shouldn't be the default. > Just install a page caching plugin of your choice[1] A bad idea, IMO. It's still going through the PHP s…

> A bad idea, IMO. It's still going through the PHP server and all of the routing/plugin/DB code within WP. Much better to use Varnish (and its ilk) and avoid overloading the PHP service.

I'm not a big WP fan, but this statement is false in most cases. Page caching in WordPress is usually (always?) serving up the pre-rendered HTML direct from disk (or CDN) without hitting PHP. Pagely (the post we're discussing) even handle that for you w/ their own CDN. I would imagine they also support request based caching and purging, warming, etc.

Most purely content sites (non-app) can run really well with a very simple TTL based cache (instead of long lived w/ complex flushing). You can very easily use something like Fastly for cloud based varnish w/ an appropriate TTL.

I also feel the need to point out that gatsby type sites and just pre-rendering / caching as well, at least in part (possible using json from a CMS for dynamic data).

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#94

Post by splatzone »

falcolas wrote: post #85
splatzone wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WordPress is not without its design flaws, some of which make sense from the point of view of helping non-techies run their own sites (such as making updates easy.) But as someone who has built 100s of sites with WordPress I feel the need to defend it on a few points here: > You have to let it modify its install. Security-fucking-nightmare. You don't have to do this, you can set up sane permissions and use the wp cli…

> You don't have to do this I updated my original comment here. > A good practice is to set up your own cron job on the server and disable the internal cron in your wp-config.php Defaults matter. And when I was working on it, this wasn't well documented anywhere. If it is now, great. It shouldn't be the default. > Just install a page caching plugin of your choice[1] A bad idea, IMO. It's still going through the PHP s…

You touch on a really good point here about the default cron setting (yes, it still uses the lazy cron on page load by default.) From a developer point of view this is questionable at best, but from a business point of view I reckon decisions like these are the core of why WordPress is popular.

You don't have to know what cron is to install a WordPress site. You don't have to know anything about git or setting up varnish. You just bung the files on your PHP server, put in your database credentials and away you go.

There is a big conflict here between what is practical for users and what is best practice for developers. WordPress has always put user experience first, to the point where it's easy to shoot yourself in the foot and get your site hacked by installing a bunch of badly made plugins. But this tradeoff in the favour of user experience had made it easy for millions of people to set up their own website, and is the reason WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#95

Post by rapind »

tootie wrote: post #55
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…

A pretty standard stack I've done recently is Netlify, Gatsby (I'd lean next at this point) with Prismic, Hubspot and GTM. It's barely more investment to setup than WordPress but lets you build something visually sophisticated really easily and you get user friendly CMS, CRM and all the analytics and user engagement stuff. And running headless means there's almost zero attack surface.

Which CMS were you using though? Netlify CMS? Last I looked at it, there was a lot to be desired (not to belittle their effort, but not even close to WP in terms of functionality).

Worth mentioning you can also run WP headless and build your front end in w/e js framework du jour you prefer.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#96

Post by EarthLaunch »

bdcravens wrote: post #40

Given that this was the most non-cooperative transitions in modern times, if not ever, is it possible they had to make certain compromises?

The same calculated compromises made by a vast part of the internet choosing WordPress and PHP. These technologies might not make sense if you have little experience with PHP or certain requirements, but there are good reasons many organizations use them. With a little dedication, it's possible to find out why without having a lot of experience with them.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#98

Post by throwawaybutwhy »

bdcravens wrote: post #40

Given that this was the most non-cooperative transitions in modern times, if not ever, is it possible they had to make certain compromises?

Wonder if they had to contend with missing letters in keyboards, there's some historical precedent for that.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#99

Post by falcolas »

rapind wrote: post #93
falcolas wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't have to do this I updated my original comment here. > A good practice is to set up your own cron job on the server and disable the internal cron in your wp-config.php Defaults matter. And when I was working on it, this wasn't well documented anywhere. If it is now, great. It shouldn't be the default. > Just install a page caching plugin of your choice[1] A bad idea, IMO. It's still going through the PHP s…

> A bad idea, IMO. It's still going through the PHP server and all of the routing/plugin/DB code within WP. Much better to use Varnish (and its ilk) and avoid overloading the PHP service. I'm not a big WP fan, but this statement is false in most cases. Page caching in WordPress is usually (always?) serving up the pre-rendered HTML direct from disk (or CDN) without hitting PHP. Pagely (the post we're discussing) even…

> Page caching in WordPress is usually (always?) serving up the pre-rendered HTML direct from disk

I'd be very curious how a WP plugin is managing this.

Third party hosting building in caching, normal in-line caches (like Varnish), nginx/apache caching, sure - I get those, and they behave how you say. But a WP plugin? I'm curious how that would bypass PHP & WP entirely.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#100

Post by pluc »

monoideism wrote: post #89

The one thing great about WordPress is the massive number of themes available (and plugins, if you're not a programmer). I wish very much that there were 10% as many attractive themes available for static sites. Yes, you can port them, but it's a pain. And yes, you can design them, but it takes more time and most programmers don't have the design chops to pull it off.

That one great thing is arguably also the one horrible thing. The entry bar for plugins and themes is, well, non-existent which results in a lot of sub-par code that makes it onto sites of unsuspecting users. Configurability, while also usually a great thing, is taken to such a level with WordPress that you're often better off designing something catered specifically to your needs instead of loading half a dozen customizable themes/plugins/libraries
Post reply on HN