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Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

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Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#171

Post by onion2k »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #44
julianlam wrote: post #2

In this age where the trend is JAM stack, it is refreshing to see that something battle-tested like WordPress was chosen. There's a reason WP has withstood the test of time. (WordPress developers being a dime a dozen also help make the case)

JAM stack (this term is trademarked by Netlify, FYI) is such an awful trend for anyone but developers. The web runs on WordPress because it's SO easy for anyone to stand up a quality, functional website. I drop in on a local WordPress event a few times a year and many of the people there are 60+ and very much non technical but have put together great sites that benefit humanity.

it's SO easy for anyone to stand up a quality, functional website

And its also really easy for it to be left without updates or security patches, with an insecure admin account password, and with a set of plugins that open up more security problems.

It might be a bit harder to get up and running with a static site generator but the fact that it's essentially unhackable (through the site itself; the host server has the same issues as any website) is a massive advantage.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#172

Post by interfixus »

captn3m0 wrote: post #158
coldtea wrote: post #150

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_.

Textpattern does that easily enough. You can even run your admin stuff on a different domain if you so desire.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#173

Post by trog »

yurishimo wrote: post #110
trog wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't have to do this, you can set up sane permissions and use the wp cli[0] tool to install updates manually. I prefer to version sites with git and install updates locally, then git pull down on to the live server. Curious as to how you manage WP with git, particularly around when new files are added by core/plugin updates, which I've always found a bit of a hassle to deal with?

The most common approach is to store everything but the wp-content folder in git, including plugins. A way to save space there is by using composer so your Repo only needs to include custom plugins that your team wrote. It can be a hassle on shared hosts, but most managed hosts have a git workflow that their agency partners utilize so it’s not too bad if you’re doing anything on a professional level.

The problem is the only thing I really care about is the stuff in wp-content! I've inherited a few sites with custom themes and it's the changes in plugins that I'm most interested in so I can track issues. Almost anything else that comes from latest.zip I am not concerned with.

I just haven't found a good workflow I guess. I'm gradually trying to strip all the plugins which are not required (there are so many) so I can just focus on the core ones that are hard requirements but even one or two decent -sized plugins is a huge responsibility to manage if you're trying to pretend you're tracking all the changes to any level of detail.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#174

Post by e2le »

Newkd wrote: post #141
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 don't think that's a direct comparison. gov.uk looks closer to something like https://www.usa.gov/ , which is similarly functional. The Whitehouse website is more political and maybe would be closer to to Downing Street's page https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/prime-ministers-... which has more photos.

I agree that might be a fairer comparison however I would argue is just as a accessible as https://gov.uk/ (to be expected since it's the same site), I don't think the addition of images makes it less so.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#175

Post by trog »

ellyagg wrote: post #124
splatzone wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep things really simple to be honest, normally I exclude wp-content/uploads and wp-config.php in .gitignore. And set the perms so WP can't write to the filesystem on production, except for the uploads directory. We install and test updates on a dev environment first then commit everything and pull it in on production.

If you don't let production write to the filesystem, doesn't that get rid of one of the main advantages of WP, that users can configure the site by adding plug-ins and such? Or on the 100s of sites, you are responsible for all the plug-ins?

> If you don't let production write to the filesystem, doesn't that get rid of one of the main advantages of WP, that users can configure the site by adding plug-ins and such? Or on the 100s of sites, you are responsible for all the plug-ins?

The short answer is yes, you're right - losing being able to write to disk means a lot of functionality is lost. But it does improve security in some contexts so the trade-off might be worth it to some people.

I wrote a small plugin that lets me flick between read-only and read/write filesystem permissions with the press of a button - so when I need to administer it, I just allow writing, and the rest of the time I leave it locked off.

Doesn't work in all circumstances (e.g., if there are plugins that need to write to the disk), but for sites which predominantly have static content it means I don't need to worry as much about things writing to disk in the event something is compromised.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#176

Post by trog »

kijin wrote: post #122
falcolas wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize that it's really written for end users instead of developers, but that means scares me every time I see something as high profile as the White House using it. For the exact reason as you say here: "it's easy to shoot yourself in the foot and get your site hacked". WP is absolutely NOT secure by design; it's a hot mess that has helped normalize ignoring security in our web applications. That we encourage its…

Hopefully the White House has access to someone who knows how to set up WordPress without shooting themselves in the foot. The fact that WordPress.com doens't get hacked all the time means that there are definitely people who know how to do it.

> The fact that WordPress.com doens't get hacked all the time means that there are definitely people who know how to do it.

Regular reminder that wordpress.com is a different software product to wordpress.org :)

wordpress.com runs their (relatively) newer JavaScript-based stack; wordpress.org (which is what we're talking about here, unless I misread the article referenced here completely) is the LAMP stack version.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#177

Post by maelito »

HotVector wrote: post #107
unfocused wrote: post #103

I also host a Wordpress site for some non-technical people that are part of the legal community. I chose it because they just need to publish basic info, much like most govt places, and all the non-tech people find it easy to add content. It's been up and running for 8 years using the same webhost. Easy to keep up to date, and easy to use, and it solves their business problem. Nothing wrong with WP when you just want…

My go-to for creating a static website to be managed by non-tech people is Svelte + some markdown renderer. I put all the info into Markdown files so it can be easily changed, kind of like Jekyll.

I don't get why you get downvoted. I'm doing the same thing with a simple react app that displays markdown, it's working great.

More and more non-tech people are happy to be introduced to github. It's just an 'article' dir where you upload your markdown file, then click on 3 green buttons to create a PR.

They're happy to discover the integrated discussion system, issues, kanban, etc.

Of course, tailor it to your audience. Some people cannot read English and will be frightened by the interface.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#178

Post by sneak »

dannyw wrote: post #123
jaza wrote: 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 problem isn't LAMP, the problem is wordpress. It stores state that should be in files in the database, and state that should be in the database in files, so they are tightly coupled, and you have to snapshot both at the same time.

It's also a security nightmare and runs dynamic code on every page load by default, so a fresh wordpress install in its default state will fall over when on HN on Reddit or Slashdot, unless you install third party caching plugins to avoid that.

It's a bad app.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#179

Post by vxNsr »

mortenjorck wrote: post #168
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…

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…

Pretty much this.

I as an experiment decided to use GitHub pages for my personal website and used some random simple looking theme that appeared on its face easy to manage. It wasn’t. The whole process is annoying, making changes to the site is annoying, adding content isn’t straightforward and if this is how all Jekyll sites are I don’t understand why anyone bothers with this sort of set up

Re: Whitehouse.gov Chooses WordPress, Again

#180

Post by paulmd »

anoncow wrote: post #154

Is there a good alternative to WordPress?

the big alternative is static content - if you are just publishing a webpage, you can use something like Jekyll to manage your content and then it is "compiled to HTML".

For simple static content there really is no need for a database or anything at all, people just want the convenience of writing content dynamically and the database is a necessary evil in wordpress to make that happen.

If you need to handle a certain amount of user submissions (that can't be handled by forms/etc) you use JAM stack - javascript + API behind it.

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