WordPress Is in Trouble • Hacker News Board

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#181

Post by GavinAnderegg » Mon, Jan 13, 2025, 9:22 PM UTC

breaker-kind wrote: post #152

this article opens with "since i last wrote about wordpress", with a link to a previous article. the linked article does the same. it goes seven layers deep! what dedication!

This drama has boggled my mind since the beginning. I've been trying to write about the open web while trying get back into blogging. It's been great to have a bunch to write about, but I sure wish it wasn't happening!

I've also been focusing on the rise of Bluesky and my move from extreme skepticism to tentative acceptance. That's been more fun to write about.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#182

Post by hu3 » Mon, Jan 13, 2025, 9:22 PM UTC

9dev wrote: post #165

hu3 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add simple version control to keep history of changes. Slap some workflow/approval process. And you have a product!

Amazing. You just ruined the internet for everyone, making us all wade through heaps of meaningless bullshit, only generated to drive the ad revenue! And do you know what’s the best part about that? You even made money off of that you can use to purchase the stuff you got ads for! Isn’t that exciting ? Thank you for your service!

Yeah I'm sure my 3 line comment is to blame for whatever damage AI does to the internet.

I'll take the compliment anyway :)

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#183

Post by frereubu » Mon, Jan 13, 2025, 9:22 PM UTC

greenthrow wrote: post #176

frereubu wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah I see, I thought you were talking about him personally.

Are you under the impression he himself has been a meaningful contributor in the last decade?

I thought I read a comment somewhere in all of this where he said that he was actually doing coding, yes, but (a) I could well be mistaken and (b) he could well have been talking rubbish.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#184

Post by softwaredoug » Mon, Jan 13, 2025, 9:24 PM UTC

pluc wrote: post #73

softwaredoug wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without a canonical fork for the community (and crucially plugin authors) to rally around it’ll be a bit like Linux distros without a shared executable format, making life difficult for everyone and making it harder to keep critical mass for any vendor.

That's difficult to do, but time will tell. There are already established forks, there are obvious leaders, there are known mechanisms to go around wordpress.org... something at some point will pick up steam and that'll be that. Maybe it will be Mullenweg himself who will continue to dig his own grave, maybe it will be the lawsuit that will be the final nail in his coffin... who knows. But WordPress will be fine. And…

I think it would basically take a tech giant going all-in (ie Amazon) and rallying other companies to get this fork into the Linux foundation or something.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#185

Post by prepend » Mon, Jan 13, 2025, 9:25 PM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #141

prepend wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can certainly be hacked, just like any static site. Web servers have vulnerabilities. And the files can certainly be edited as they aren’t immutable. They are less resource intensive and easier to maintain, but aren’t immune. (Running mostly static sites converted from Wordpress sites, but also running 10 year old+ word press sites that haven’t been changed in forever)

Even if it's remotely possible to hack Nginx... what's the motivation to hack a static site? There's no DB with juicy data and no compute to abuse for mining crypto or running DDOS attacks.

Similar motivation as hacking a Wordpress site, putting seo spam out there.

There’s less payoff, but people still do it.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#186

Post by labster » Mon, Jan 13, 2025, 9:26 PM UTC

chrismsimpson wrote: post #168

dangrossman wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a mental breakdown, I think this is a (poorly executed) long pivot into Matt's companies having tighter control over the ecosystem and keeping more of the profits from hosting, plugin and theme sales. He's burning down "the community" on purpose. In a couple years, it'll be run more like Shopify, where the theme store and app store only list products that run their billing through Shopify and give…

Perhaps more indicative of late stage capitalism where rent seekers try to extract more and more value and consolidate more and more power.

Late stage capitalism is almost indistinguishable from a mental disorder, though.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#187

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 13, 2025, 9:27 PM UTC

beshrkayali wrote: post #64

I really think Matt is suffering from some sort of a mental breakdown. It’s a sad situation and there’s a lot to learn about open source projects with a huge user base and where the bottle necks exist. But I think people who know or are close to him should seriously consider an intervention. I can’t believe after two decades he’d just decide to throw it all out in a blazing fire and tarnish his reputation (and Wordpr…

[deleted]

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#188

Post by greenthrow » Mon, Jan 13, 2025, 9:27 PM UTC

frereubu wrote: post #183

greenthrow wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you under the impression he himself has been a meaningful contributor in the last decade?

I thought I read a comment somewhere in all of this where he said that he was actually doing coding, yes, but (a) I could well be mistaken and (b) he could well have been talking rubbish.

I think you misinterpreted him funding development. Read the linked article. Should clear you up. He was funding (via Automattic) an estimated 4k+ hours of work per week and is cutting that back to 45. Not himself coding but people that work for him.

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#189

Post by carlosjobim » Mon, Jan 13, 2025, 9:28 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #67

> Now it seems like the community needs to take over, but Mullenweg still holds all the keys. This move by Matt to pull out of development all but guarantees a fork. The biggest argument against was the work that Automattic was putting into WordPress would be very hard to replicate in a new project. But if the community is going to be expected to do ~all of the work anyway, there's no reason to do that work inside Ma…

[flagged]

Re: WordPress Is in Trouble

#190

Post by crowcroft » Mon, Jan 13, 2025, 9:28 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #95

internetter wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider a static site. They cannot be hacked, they are cheaper to host, and once the files are generated they are immutable

They can certainly be hacked, just like any static site. Web servers have vulnerabilities. And the files can certainly be edited as they aren’t immutable. They are less resource intensive and easier to maintain, but aren’t immune. (Running mostly static sites converted from Wordpress sites, but also running 10 year old+ word press sites that haven’t been changed in forever)

The web server can be hacked so it serves something other than the static HTML you uploaded but there is no 'app' to hack, there's a whole class of problems that can happen on WordPress that can not happen with static sites.

What would hacking an HTML file even mean.