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WordPlate: WordPress on Composer with sensible defaults

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Re: WordPlate: WordPress on Composer with sensible defaults

#41

Post by iambateman »

kokolores wrote: post #38
iambateman wrote: post #36

Adding composer to WordPress isn’t gong to fix it. The problem is more fundamental - WP was conceived as a blog engine and has proven itself constitutionally incapable of truly moving beyond that frame. * features People say that “you can just add a plug-in” for whatever, and that’s true. But so many things that should be core are not (advanced custom fields, forms) and other features have no place in modern WordPres…

Sounds like you're building exactly what I'm currently looking for. I'd love to give it a shot as soon as your beta is ready.

Shoot me an email -

Stephen@bate-man.com

and I’ll add you to the list!

Re: WordPlate: WordPress on Composer with sensible defaults

#42

Post by splatzone »

montroser wrote: post #39

WordPress is plain crazy. Marketing people insisted on WordPress so we reluctantly put it off in its own isolated network and expected bad things to happen. And, they did... - WordPress consultant hired by marketing people while "editing the theme" introduced an infinite loop which caused OOM killer. That's when we learned you can point-click your way to editing actual php code in the admin web interface! Complete an…

You could have avoided all of these problems by having a developer set up a staging environment, version the site in Git and disallow file editing on the site.

Re: WordPlate: WordPress on Composer with sensible defaults

#43

Post by rob »

montroser wrote: post #39

WordPress is plain crazy. Marketing people insisted on WordPress so we reluctantly put it off in its own isolated network and expected bad things to happen. And, they did... - WordPress consultant hired by marketing people while "editing the theme" introduced an infinite loop which caused OOM killer. That's when we learned you can point-click your way to editing actual php code in the admin web interface! Complete an…

Yes, WordPress gives administrators the ability to change their theme, edit theme and plugin code (which can be disabled in wp-config.php in two lines and should probably be standard if you're setting up a WordPress website for somebody), and make changes to their website — that's why their administrators.

You should probably think about giving certain users like 'content people' the 'Editor' role if you don't want them doing administrator stuff like editing the theme file directly.

I'd imagine most CMSs where you give your client full administrator access can cause issues with them doing things they shouldn't, like blindly upgrading plugins.

Which SEO plugin gave you that 500 error? Most WordPress plugins have a 'Requires PHP' header that specifies the minimum PHP version required and refuses to install otherwise.

Re: WordPlate: WordPress on Composer with sensible defaults

#44

Post by bottled_poe »

noeltock wrote: post #40
montroser wrote: post #39

WordPress is plain crazy. Marketing people insisted on WordPress so we reluctantly put it off in its own isolated network and expected bad things to happen. And, they did... - WordPress consultant hired by marketing people while "editing the theme" introduced an infinite loop which caused OOM killer. That's when we learned you can point-click your way to editing actual php code in the admin web interface! Complete an…

Why do you give non-devs the ability to upgrade PHP plugins and edit theme syntax, shouldn't that be the site admin handling? Why are you not using staging to test? These don't seem like WP problems :/

For better or worse, part of the appeal of Wordpress is ease of use for non-developers to update their website. Most small businesses definitely don’t employ a dedicated site admin/developer - if they had to they wouldn’t bother with a website. In fact, it looks like that’s the way things are going - pushing small businesses into walled gardens like FB, Insta, Wix, etc. And I don’t blame them, that’s probably the right decision for most businesses.

Re: WordPlate: WordPress on Composer with sensible defaults

#45

Post by igetspam »

rastographics wrote: post #37
igetspam wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the alternative? I am not a creative type and I've been desperately trying to find something like a CMS that is simple enough that I don't have to think about it and featured enough that I can have things like personal profiles behind a login (for a brownie troop). WordPress seems like the same nightmare it was when I first looked at it however long ago but so do all the rest. Is there something better?

processwire.com. You have to build your front-end pages using whatever html/css template you want, but moving over to Processwire from wordpress was a breath of fresh air.

Thank you! I'll take a look. I've been playing with Ghost for the last 30 minutes (based on a comment below) and that might be my move but I'll definitely look at this too.

Re: WordPlate: WordPress on Composer with sensible defaults

#46

Post by johnchristopher »

montroser wrote: post #39

WordPress is plain crazy. Marketing people insisted on WordPress so we reluctantly put it off in its own isolated network and expected bad things to happen. And, they did... - WordPress consultant hired by marketing people while "editing the theme" introduced an infinite loop which caused OOM killer. That's when we learned you can point-click your way to editing actual php code in the admin web interface! Complete an…

> - WordPress consultant hired by marketing people while "editing the theme" introduced an infinite loop which caused OOM killer. That's when we learned you can point-click your way to editing actual php code in the admin web interface! Complete and total chaos and anarchy.

Fear not, you can also introduce infinite loops with a good old code editor and ship through FTP or git or whatever. Also work with different CMS and languages.

Who was responsible for setting user roles on that site ? Who gave admin access to a consultant without having a conversation with ops ? If there's an op team, why isn't there a staging environment for that site ?

> - Content manager "upgraded the SEO plugin" which downloaded from the Internet some hot-new code which used some language features beyond the version of php we were running, and bam, the whole thing was 500s, and everyone freaked out!

Content manager shouldn't be given admin rights to a Wordpress installation. Why did op team allow content managers to upgrade software ?

> - Content people messed up the syntax editing the theme trying to change contact info in the footer, site wouldn't load anymore, they panicked and reverted the whole theme back to the stock default, and then ops people had to help them resurrect from the daily git check-in of the 1gb docroot they set up after the last time this happened.

Isn't that also one of op team's job ? Manage backup and restore ?

Seriously, you can replace WordPress with Joomla, Drupla, Ghost here and the story is the same.

Re: WordPlate: WordPress on Composer with sensible defaults

#47

Post by montroser »

noeltock wrote: post #40
montroser wrote: post #39

WordPress is plain crazy. Marketing people insisted on WordPress so we reluctantly put it off in its own isolated network and expected bad things to happen. And, they did... - WordPress consultant hired by marketing people while "editing the theme" introduced an infinite loop which caused OOM killer. That's when we learned you can point-click your way to editing actual php code in the admin web interface! Complete an…

Why do you give non-devs the ability to upgrade PHP plugins and edit theme syntax, shouldn't that be the site admin handling? Why are you not using staging to test? These don't seem like WP problems :/

Why can a "theme" editor edit application code? Why do I need a developer in order to change what it looks like? Why is plug-in code not sandboxed? These are WordPress problems.

At the end of the day, if you tell me that WordPress is an application framework, that themes are code and plugins are dependencies, then okay -- devs own it and there's code reviews and staging environments and deployments and migrations and all the rest.

But if you tell me it's a CMS so marketing people can have a blog, I just ... thought it would be simpler.

Re: WordPlate: WordPress on Composer with sensible defaults

#48

Post by gnz11 »

bottled_poe wrote: post #44
noeltock wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you give non-devs the ability to upgrade PHP plugins and edit theme syntax, shouldn't that be the site admin handling? Why are you not using staging to test? These don't seem like WP problems :/

For better or worse, part of the appeal of Wordpress is ease of use for non-developers to update their website. Most small businesses definitely don’t employ a dedicated site admin/developer - if they had to they wouldn’t bother with a website. In fact, it looks like that’s the way things are going - pushing small businesses into walled gardens like FB, Insta, Wix, etc. And I don’t blame them, that’s probably the rig…

"part of the appeal of Wordpress is ease of use for non-developers to update their website."

Seems like in every HN thread regarding Wordpress this is brought up, but later the thread fills up with horror stories of sites being melted down when non-technical users are left to manage these Wordpress sites. Just my two cents, but that supposed benefit of Wordpress seems more like wishful thinking.

Re: WordPlate: WordPress on Composer with sensible defaults

#49

Post by montroser »

splatzone wrote: post #42
montroser wrote: post #39

WordPress is plain crazy. Marketing people insisted on WordPress so we reluctantly put it off in its own isolated network and expected bad things to happen. And, they did... - WordPress consultant hired by marketing people while "editing the theme" introduced an infinite loop which caused OOM killer. That's when we learned you can point-click your way to editing actual php code in the admin web interface! Complete an…

You could have avoided all of these problems by having a developer set up a staging environment, version the site in Git and disallow file editing on the site.

Fair enough, and now I know.

But would you also agree it's a totally insane capability, let alone default, for a CMS to offer a web interface to edit its own running application code? With no VCS integrated or rollback mechanism...

I was too naive to know I should look for a thing like that to disallow.

Re: WordPlate: WordPress on Composer with sensible defaults

#50

Post by CM30 »

noeltock wrote: post #40
montroser wrote: post #39

WordPress is plain crazy. Marketing people insisted on WordPress so we reluctantly put it off in its own isolated network and expected bad things to happen. And, they did... - WordPress consultant hired by marketing people while "editing the theme" introduced an infinite loop which caused OOM killer. That's when we learned you can point-click your way to editing actual php code in the admin web interface! Complete an…

Why do you give non-devs the ability to upgrade PHP plugins and edit theme syntax, shouldn't that be the site admin handling? Why are you not using staging to test? These don't seem like WP problems :/

Probably because in many cases the assumption is that the dev and main editor are the same person?

It's not a great assumption anymore (since many WordPress installs are now set up by agencies and dev teams for non technical clients), but it's likely a holdover from the days when most people installing it were also the main designer, developer, content writer, etc (read, bloggers).

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