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WordPress has left the building

kevinjohngallagher.com

111–120 of 223 posts

Re: WordPress has left the building

#112

Wait so he's complaining that a free piece of software that is designed to "create a beautiful website or blog" (from Wordpress.org) doesn't cut it as a high powered CMS? I think if we're honest, wordpress is a blogging platform and if you try to deform it into your own little niche needs, you need to accept the inherent risks.

For me personally, I'm moving away from Wordpress as well in favor of either hand-written static pages or just rolling quick Sinatra/Rails apps.

Now of course I don't expect that either of these is as user-friendly to many (and they don't solve many of the ailments that he cites without effort), but what I'm trying to escape from are the things that are just 'broken' about Wordpress. I hate the 'loop' that they use. I don't like PHP one bit compared to Ruby. No automated tests. I really dislike the way theming works generally. The layout of the entire application is just wrong to me. I like the ease of deployment, but I've got enough experience that deploying a Sinatra app takes me only seconds.

For me, what Wordpress once did for me quickly is no longer an asset generally. With my personal skills and experience I can much more quickly get a Rails/Sinatra blog off the ground than I can reskin a Wordpress one and beat it into submission.

Re: WordPress has left the building

#113
post #19
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

concrete5 cms is pretty decent.

You may well be right, but I think you should have disclosed your status in the concrete5 community and the fact that you've contributed code to concrete5 and created the blog app. Mostly because as a first-time poster, no-one knows you here and it would be good to see some impartiality or at least a critical argument about what sets concrete5 apart in respect to addressing the concerns of the article.

buro9, I guess I should have, but i merely stated that a CMS that i know and actively develop for vs. one that the OP is apparently unhappy with. I'm not a bot trying to funnel people into concrete5, I merely intended to provide an alternative without jumping down OP's throat with a canned "critical argument" because I am not a concrete5 evangelist or anything of that sort.

Re: WordPress has left the building

#114
post #76
post #4

What's the alternative?

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Expression Engine yet and am curious to hear people's opinions about it.

A lot of us would love to be able to chime in on EE, I'm sure. Not having a downloadable demo or some way of checking out without paying $200 makes it way lower down the list when you're looking for alternatives.

I would love to check it out; but if I don't like it or it won't work for my clients it's a total hassle.

Re: WordPress has left the building

#115
post #93
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Expression Engine yet and am curious to hear people's opinions about it.

Suggested using EE before for a few clients. They turned down because of the license and hassle to renew it.

EE simplified their license with version 2, and there is no ongoing/renewal license fee: http://expressionengine.com/sales_faq/article/do_i_have_to_b...

Re: WordPress has left the building

#116

Wait so he's complaining that a free piece of software that is designed to "create a beautiful website or blog" (from Wordpress.org) doesn't cut it as a high powered CMS? I think if we're honest, wordpress is a blogging platform and if you try to deform it into your own little niche needs, you need to accept the inherent risks.

Wordpress isn't a CMS, SilverStripe is, and it has a full MVC framework that it's built on too - makes coding extensions MUCH nicer than both WP and Drupal (ughhh). For me it's rails for the complex stuff, SilverStripe for the simple sites. Keeps me and clients happy.

I agree SilverStripe is really clean to theme and extend... however some of its base functionality can be a little dodgy at times :)

Still the best open source CMS I have used.

Re: WordPress has left the building

#117
post #22

After about 10 minutes with Plone, a few months with Joomla, about 2 years with Drupal, and finally 3 years with WordPress, I think WordPress is still a brilliant solution for lots of problems. The closest competitor, Drupal, is an absolute nightmare. For designers, developers and certainly for the end user. It still doesn't even ship with a wysiwyg editor—hard to disagree that this is precisely what the end user wan…

I already posted about this in a different sub-thread, but it's applicable here as well: Take a look at ProcessWire. It might very well cover 80% of Drupal's use cases, it's vastly easier to set up, extend, and maintain, and the admin UI is exquisitely minimal. I've used it on two projects so far, and with its roadmap, it's looking like my go-to CMS for years to come.

Re: WordPress has left the building

#119
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I don't keep up with Wordpress too much, but my perception is that you should go with something like Drupal (or other proprietary options) if you want a platform fully capable of being a CMS. That said, any CMS will struggle with the challenges that he lists. It's not some sort of magical entity where you turn it on and it's perfect. I feel bad for his clients...

Except that Drupal is, interface-wise, even worse than Wordpress; and management of the damn thing is difficult even for the developers among us. It's hard to recommend it when you know clients/users will struggle with it.

Yep when we had to do work on drupal sites all the junior staff where frightened to even change add a small piece of content as the interface was so bad an the sites where prone to breaking if you made innocuous changes.

Re: WordPress has left the building

#120

Wait so he's complaining that a free piece of software that is designed to "create a beautiful website or blog" (from Wordpress.org) doesn't cut it as a high powered CMS? I think if we're honest, wordpress is a blogging platform and if you try to deform it into your own little niche needs, you need to accept the inherent risks.

Wordpress isn't a CMS, SilverStripe is, and it has a full MVC framework that it's built on too - makes coding extensions MUCH nicer than both WP and Drupal (ughhh). For me it's rails for the complex stuff, SilverStripe for the simple sites. Keeps me and clients happy.

I suspect a lot of people become expert in a "CMS" like WordPress or Drupal, because it seems easier than learning to work with a proper framework like Rails, and then find themselves stuck inside the platform.

Like project management systems, CMS is destined to be reinvented by everyone, every day of the week.

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