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

WordPress has left the building

kevinjohngallagher.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 223 posts

Re: WordPress has left the building

#181

Post by digitallimit0 »

weaksauce wrote: post #139
ahmadss wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An alternative that is not as well known is ExpressionEngine. FWIW, we've done a slew of EE installs and a few WordPress intalls and clients that have made the switch from EE to WP have loved it. The admin UI is attractive for end users, and when it comes to theming, designers love the flexibility of the layout variations and front-end developers can actually implement said designs without hacking the EE theming syst…

> ...that have made the switch from EE to WP have loved it. Might want to revise that to "from WP to EE."

Yeah, that confused my balls.

Re: WordPress has left the building

#182

Post by nknight »

chc wrote: post #88
kelnos wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... the fact that it had major bugs. Like, yeah, that's what that means." No, that's not what beta means. I expect core functionality to work properly in a beta. I expect there to be intermittent issues, and I expect advanced/fringe features to maybe sometimes not work. I expect there to be workarounds for most (but not all) issues that crop up. But the freakin' main menu didn't work. How is that beta-quality? I'd h…

1. I know definitions are a little hazy, but your definition of a "beta" is not really the traditional meaning. In a beta, core functionality should mostly be there , but it's expected to be buggy. Beta is the point at which most bugs are expected to be worked out, because that's the point when the software is mostly feature-complete. That's why people who use the beta are called "beta testers." I mean, you're welcom…

> your definition of a "beta" is not really the traditional meaning. In a beta, core functionality should mostly be there, but it's expected to be buggy.

I expect bugs, yes, but the "traditional" meaning of beta is that core functionality is done and it's passed through QA and some form of alpha stage with internal and some trusted external testers to catch, at a minimum, glaringly obvious stupidity.

I'll excuse a beta release with some significant but not absolutely critical feature clearly walled off and labelled "this bit doesn't work yet". I'll not excuse one where critical functionality becomes clearly unusable just by virtue of running on a supported platform. That's so beyond the pale for what is -- even if in a twisted/attenuated sense -- a commercial product as to reflect nothing less than utter incompetence.

Re: WordPress has left the building

#183

Post by hippich »

Having quite a lot of experience with clients wanting to build next social network, yelp, online store using word press, I wrote article "Why Wordpress is Bad" - http://www.yepcorp.com/blogs/pavel-karoukin/why-wordpress-ba... a while ago.

tl;dr; Wordpress is great for a blog. I think they put a lot of effort to make UI perfect for single user blog. And it is easy to install. But what happens next - people try to do something with wordpress it not supposed to do. And that's where problems start comming.

Re: WordPress has left the building

#184

Post by TylerE »

FuzzyDunlop wrote: post #161
TylerE wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big difference is that in Drupal it's possible to get pretty far without ever writing a single line of code, even templates. For some use cases that's very powerful, especially an environment where you have trainable, reasonably technical people who aren't programmers.

But for the talented developers and/or programmers on the team, it's a complete productivity and sanity drain. Moreso if you're, say, part of HN's target audience, because you'll know all the modern web development techniques, and you'll be able to use none of them. I have had an absolutely terrible experience with it, which sadly isn't unique amongst these big PHP projects.

It's not bad once you get your head around it. Sure, it's not buzzword compliant (MVC, TDD, ORM OH MY!) but for what it is, it can be pretty compelling.

My primary job for the last 2 years has been developing a Drupal site for a group of daily newspapers with monthly page views in the low 8 figures.

We were in a situation where we had to get a site up quickly (Our small group was bought off from a much larger conglomerate, so the huge $$$$ Java system we had been using went away). Drupal allows us to get a tolerable site up in about 3 months, and a much better site up about 6 months later. Have there been pain points? Sure. But if we'd used anything else there's no way we would have been on our feet nearly as quickly.

Are we investigating other options? Of course, if I wasn't I wouldn't be doing my job. There's a part of me that would love to rewrite the whole thing in Rails or Django. That would be a huge undertaking though.

Re: WordPress has left the building

#185

Post by hippich »

smacktoward wrote: post #44

Generally speaking software tends to either start powerful and try to work its way towards usability, or start usable and try to work its way towards power. The latter approach almost always beats the former. A simple but usable product attracts new users, those new users eventually start demanding features, the features eventually get added, the new features make the product attractive to more people, some of those…

I do know nothing about Plone and TYPO3, but I had quite a lot of experience with Wordpress and Drupal. Do not be tricked by default Drupal installation UI. Drupal is very configurable by downloading right modules. (obviously you need to have experience with Drupal to know that).

And I am not talking about code side...

Re: WordPress has left the building

#186

Post by smacktoward »

hippich wrote: post #185
smacktoward wrote: post #44

Generally speaking software tends to either start powerful and try to work its way towards usability, or start usable and try to work its way towards power. The latter approach almost always beats the former. A simple but usable product attracts new users, those new users eventually start demanding features, the features eventually get added, the new features make the product attractive to more people, some of those…

I do know nothing about Plone and TYPO3, but I had quite a lot of experience with Wordpress and Drupal. Do not be tricked by default Drupal installation UI. Drupal is very configurable by downloading right modules. (obviously you need to have experience with Drupal to know that). And I am not talking about code side...

> Do not be tricked by default Drupal installation UI

Defaults are extremely powerful things. For most users they are all of your product they will ever experience.

If your default settings are off-putting, people will feel that your software is off-putting. The defaults are the welcome mat. If the welcome mat is studded with titanium spikes coated with blowfish toxin, you shouldn't be surprised if people aren't eager to walk through the door.

Re: WordPress has left the building

#187

Post by tyw »

ahmadss wrote: post #109
mortenjorck wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the author's problem, and the problem of nearly every frustrated WordPress user, is that the alternatives aren't nearly as enjoyable to work with as WordPress. It has a nice, understandable, and flexible API, and even though its greatest strengths are really only in blogging, the friendliness of the environment naturally invites stretching its use. For these people, I would strongly recommend a look at Proces…

An alternative that is not as well known is ExpressionEngine. FWIW, we've done a slew of EE installs and a few WordPress intalls and clients that have made the switch from EE to WP have loved it. The admin UI is attractive for end users, and when it comes to theming, designers love the flexibility of the layout variations and front-end developers can actually implement said designs without hacking the EE theming syst…

As someone who's done his fair share of ExpressionEngine development, the template system is a source of endless frustration as soon as you need to do anything remotely complex on the page or deal with user input. It is a great choice for blogging sites where a group of editors publish content to a site in predefined channels, but really falls down if you push it too hard.

Template processing is slow, processing order is wonky, and it's very easy to create N+1 query loops that can only be avoided by writing custom SQL queries/php. They also made some poor database structure choices in certain areas.

Mostly though it just boggles the mind why they put so much effort into creating a regex-based templating system when the app is already just PHP.

Still, probably the best CMS I've used and it certainly has its uses. I just wouldn't use it to develop anything complicated ever again.

Re: WordPress has left the building

#188

Post by boopboop »

odddogmedia wrote: post #167

I work at a firm that employs WordPress to build simple B2B and B2C websites. We share many of the same opinions as this author, and even more shortcomings come to mind: 1) Unable to change content types 2) Funneled into the "Blog" post type, which is simply called "Posts", with no easy way to kill this off and create your own 3) User group management The list could go on forever. However, if the shoe doesn't fit, wh…

"Unable to change content types 2) Funneled into the "Blog" post type, which is simply called "Posts", with no easy way to kill this off and create your own.."

I do not understand. Wordpress can certainly use custom content types.

Re: WordPress has left the building

#189

Post by aaronbrethorst »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #64
crikli wrote: post #57

WordPress wasn't ever in the building. Or at least it wasn't in the building the author wanted it to be. Lots of folks have tried to force Wordpress to be more than a blog platform. I've always seen these efforts in the same light as when guys dumps tons of money and time squeezing horsepower of a Honda Civic: end of the day, it's still a Civic that get its lunch eaten by a stock 'Vette. Look, you just don't get powe…

as I've viewed when guys dumps tons of money and time squeezing horsepower of a Honda Civic Exactly. It's still a fucking Honda, and for the time/money spent on it you should have bought a Lexus. Similarly you can tweak wordpress all day long, in the end it's a blogging software.

> Exactly. It's still a fucking Honda, and for the time/money spent on it you should have bought a Lexus.

At the risk of being pedantic, I think you mean Acura (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acura).

Re: WordPress has left the building

#190

Post by hippich »

smacktoward wrote: post #186
hippich wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do know nothing about Plone and TYPO3, but I had quite a lot of experience with Wordpress and Drupal. Do not be tricked by default Drupal installation UI. Drupal is very configurable by downloading right modules. (obviously you need to have experience with Drupal to know that). And I am not talking about code side...

> Do not be tricked by default Drupal installation UI Defaults are extremely powerful things. For most users they are all of your product they will ever experience. If your default settings are off-putting, people will feel that your software is off-putting. The defaults are the welcome mat. If the welcome mat is studded with titanium spikes coated with blowfish toxin, you shouldn't be surprised if people aren't eage…

You are talking about _users_, not developers developing _for_ users.

Op is _developer_.

Post reply on HN