Live data from Hacker News

Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

pagely.com

161–170 of 371 posts

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#161
post #123
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a Drupal dev for ~10 years. Once upon a time, I built many sites with it, and I recommended it to many folks. Despite its flaws (and it always had flaws), it was a great piece of software in its heyday, and it had (and still has?) an amazing community. I'd still choose it over WordPress any day. But the days when I'd recommend either of them (or indeed anything in PHP) are long gone. Your best bet now is probab…

There is nothing wrong with Wordpress and the LAMP stack. It’s fine for many great use cases. It powers, and will continue to power many of the biggest sites in the world. Static sites are a tradeoff, and you’re often dealing with other messes especially with non-technical users.

The only problem not addressed is that the browser directly interfaces with code that has access to the database and host computer. A static site generator is leagues more secure since you can lock anything that touches the database/CMS content behind multiple layers of authentication and 2fa, significantly reducing the attack surface.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#162
post #62

I was curious after seeing the accessibility statement what the previous administration's had. https://www.whitehouse.gov/accessibility/ https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/accessibility https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/accessibility.ht... https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/accessibility With that last one not being surprising at all.

What is the point of this page besides signaling? It seems completely useless from an informational standpoint.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Simplicity? Perhaps in its use, but not the code. Nobody but other devs cares about the simplicity of the code if the code works. > The code and hosting requirements are, frankly, Frankenstein's monster levels of frightening. Huh? Wordpress/PHP hosting requirements are the easiest to meet in the industry. Not to mention the most widely available... > ~~You have to~~ WP expect you to install it such that it can modi…

Wordpress is also the only CMS that offers multisite hosting - single codebase, single webserver, one docker container - for running multiple sites with different configuration. You wanna run 2 blogs on Ghost - run 2 instances, same for _everything but Wordpress_.

Typo3 can do that too.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Simplicity? Perhaps in its use, but not the code. Nobody but other devs cares about the simplicity of the code if the code works. > The code and hosting requirements are, frankly, Frankenstein's monster levels of frightening. Huh? Wordpress/PHP hosting requirements are the easiest to meet in the industry. Not to mention the most widely available... > ~~You have to~~ WP expect you to install it such that it can modi…

Wordpress is also the only CMS that offers multisite hosting - single codebase, single webserver, one docker container - for running multiple sites with different configuration. You wanna run 2 blogs on Ghost - run 2 instances, same for _everything but Wordpress_.

Well, Drupal has multisite capability, too. I don't think using multisite is actually that good an idea. Having two separate websites be dependent on the same codebase is very prone to cause serious life cycle problems. I'd advice against using multisite on WP or Drupal.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#165
I remember first learning about Whitehouse.gov running WordPress back in 2018 when The Council of Economic Advisers published a paper[1] that linked to our website as a reference[2]. The paper was a single PDF file that resided in a /wp-content/uploads/2018 directory on Whitehouse.gov. There are government websites[3] that link to this PDF file that now returns a 404 because the new Whitehouse.gov only appears to have an uploads folder starting with 2021. Poking around, I found the Archived Trump White House Website[4] that still houses the PDF in the same /wp-content/uploads/2018 directory.

I wish the new Whitehouse.gov website gave a more descriptive 404 indicating the change or better yet, perform a 301 redirect so the original Whitehouse.gov link[5] works.

[1] https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018...

[2] https://www.last10k.com/sec-filings/unh/0000731766-18-000005...

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7357013/#idm140...

[4] https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/

[5] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/The-Pr...

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#166
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…

But Dev's are the people who had issues with WP. WP has been given this awful image but when you can buy a fully functional LMS system for $69 with 6 months support, you just can't beat the value.

Want to ensure people don't laugh at your WP site - use Hide My WP. You block most common intrusion attacks such as PHP injections, you see where the attempts are being made and the site works. Need to convert the whole thing to a PWA? There's a plugin for that which will do in in minutes and cost $30.

It's like the beer/wine connoisseurs who insist that the 'common' option is just not good enough for them. But $9 wine or $100 - most end users don't know the difference.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#167
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…

There's plugins and WP developers galore. Actually, for $89.99 per month you can have a team that watches and fixes your site as and when things go bad. All of the above does not appeal to the masses. Hide my WP takes away the security risk in minutes of adding the plugin.

It is amazing how tech people are so far off from understanding real, everyday non-tech people and their needs.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#168
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…

The threads of replies debating the technical "simplicity" of Wordpress are missing this part:

> easily modify content

If you have non-technical users editing a site, this one aspect takes precedence over everything else, and it's there that Wordpress continues to generally obliterate whatever workflow may qualify as "simple" to the average HN reader. If you've never used Wordpress' Gutenberg editor (or others based on the same model such as Medium or Squarespace), you should try it. The ability to not only change formatting but page structure and layout in a guided, template-driven way is simply not comparable to editing a Markdown file.

I'm pretty ambivalent on Wordpress' technical merits and its plugin ecosystem is a terrible attractive nuisance for the uninitiated, but if you want to give content authors a robust tool for publishing, there's not much else like it.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#170
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 there a CMS that has a Wordpress-like admin panel and content editing tools that builds and deploys the needed updates to a static site when you save an article, etc.?

Most static site generators can use WordPress as a data source, and rebuild via a webhook.
Post reply on HN