For those of you who want to use modern PHP with WordPress, there's Wordpress MTV: https://github.com/newsapps/wordpress-mtv
Interesting, didn't know that plugin. Thanks.
Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.
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Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.
#72Interesting concept, but like others have said, I'm not sure if you're catering to the right crowd. I've taken a handful of computer science classes and am a web designer at heart, yet even I would not be very inclined to use this. I would rather do it from scratch if I'm interested in learning these newer languages like CoffeeScript. Wordpress is more for those who don't know anything and/or want to build a semi-customizable blog/website quickly.
That being said, this is a fantastic project and I applaud you for doing this. I hope those who do use it end up enjoying it.
Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.
#73LOL. Why not just go the whole hog and run wordpress inside ruby, using tenderlove's Phuby bridge/adapter/thing. https://github.com/tenderlove/phuby Demo of him actually using this to run wordpress inside rack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXERy8Y2eVo Or, you know, spend a day knocking together your own blog in rails. I guess it could be good if you are wedded to a preexisting client base which demands wordpress, e…
"Or, you know, spend a day knocking together your own blog in rails."
Understood you're exagerating for effect, but underestimating the complexity of a process like "blogging," over-estimating how much of it can be "simply" reëngineered, and dismissing the collective work of tens of person years is a real issue. I've witnessed that attitude cost businesses dearly.
Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Just because you do do something, doesn't mean you didn't spend a ton more resource than was necessary. And because you spent more resource than needed doesn't mean you delivered the best possible result.
Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just as an example, it is better to make an app like BaseCamp or Campfire with Ruby on Rails than WordPress. But I can learn enough in a matter of weeks to make something like the P2 Theme ( http://www.p2theme.com ) with WordPress; god knows how long it'd take me to go from completely zero programming knowledge to the level required to build the same thing in RoR
Yeah, but if a client wants something custom you're stuck either modifying an existing plugin, or creating a new one, and creating Wordpress plugins is a godawful mess.
Care to expand on 'godawful mess'?
It's pretty straightforward and easy imo.
Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.
#75If you're going to use all the new hip tools (and take the time to learn how to use them), just go one step farther and stop using Wordpress.
I'm not a Wordpress fan, but for better or worse, there are Wordpress plugins that do many, many things. For certain sets of needs, you can just grap WP and several plugins, throw them together with a half decent theme and you're done. I don't advocate that, because I enjoy craftsmanship and elegant solutions, but some businesses can be built in weeks, not months, using WP at very low cost--maybe the cost of the them…
> For certain sets of needs, you can just grap WP and several plugins, throw them together with a half decent theme and you're done.
until you are victim of a reddit-effect and your precious site goes down. or some yet another security hole is published and taken advantage of by thousands of spammers. I got nothing against wordpress and it's community, but AFAIR (nowadays I don't touch it) the wordpress ecosystem was full of unsecure plugins with awful performance, written by unqualified programmers.
Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.
#76This nearly made me sick. Yes, let's use RUBY to generate our PHP. That makes loads of sense. Then you said HAML, and I giggled. Then you said SASS, and I started cackling. Then you said CoffeeScript, and I nearly died of laughter. Keep your Rubyist junk out of my (unbeloved) PHP.
You know that you don't have to use it, right? Just want to make sure...
It would probably help if the introduction to the project ("stop writing themes like it's 1998") could manage to be a little more matter-of-fact about the advantages it might have to offer and maybe a bit less opinionated.
Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not a Wordpress fan, but for better or worse, there are Wordpress plugins that do many, many things. For certain sets of needs, you can just grap WP and several plugins, throw them together with a half decent theme and you're done. I don't advocate that, because I enjoy craftsmanship and elegant solutions, but some businesses can be built in weeks, not months, using WP at very low cost--maybe the cost of the them…
> For certain sets of needs, you can just grap WP and several plugins, throw them together with a half decent theme and you're done. until you are victim of a reddit-effect and your precious site goes down. or some yet another security hole is published and taken advantage of by thousands of spammers. I got nothing against wordpress and it's community, but AFAIR (nowadays I don't touch it) the wordpress ecosystem was…
There is a plugin for that!
Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.
#78This seems like an awful lot of extra layering on top of WP's horribly ugly theming system... And adding Ruby as a requirement? What about building on PHP-based tools like Assetic, or a cleaner template format? https://github.com/kriswallsmith/assetic I've never understood why people were willing to jump through so many hoops building themes in WP's messy way. As a comparison, here's a complete theme (based on the Tw…
It's not a horribly ugly theming system. I'm mainly an HTML and CSS guy, and know a healthy amount of PHP. But I don't know enough to set up a server, databases, write a CMS from scratch (well, maybe I could), and I don't like spending a lot of time in the Terminal. I'm not a programmer. Even as a designer, I'm able to use WordPress' powerful theming system (which is pretty easy to understand and, in my opinion, not…
From the point of view of an experienced software developer, writing a Wordpress theme is an ugly job because the Wordpress API is inconsistent, incomplete and badly documented.
Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.
#79>>Ability to write PHP code using the beautiful Haml templating system; >>Ability to write CSS stylesheets using the awesome Sass syntax [...]; >>Ability to write Javascript logic in Coffeescript; Some may like that, but I want to write my PHP in PHP, and write my CSS in CSS, and write my JS in JS. I really never got why I would write one language in another language just to then use some tool to translate it (and if…
"I really never got why I would write one language in another language" The terser the syntax, the less room for error in comparison to its more verbose counterpart. "just to then use some tool to translate it (and if it gets a little complicated have to manually fix translation problems afterwards)" If you're manually fixing compiled code, you are doing it wrong.
Exactly, using higher level languages is a matter of DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) and normalization (specify things in one place, have them change everywhere consistently).
Especially for CSS this is really useful as in itself is a crude, low-level language, things can quickly become very verbose especially if you consider cross-browser compatibility for the fancier effects.
Re: Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998.
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, but if a client wants something custom you're stuck either modifying an existing plugin, or creating a new one, and creating Wordpress plugins is a godawful mess.
Care to expand on 'godawful mess'? It's pretty straightforward and easy imo.
As someone who sucks at programming, I second that sentiment.