Ghost — rethinking WordPress • Hacker News Board

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#131

Post by sandGorgon » Mon, Nov 05, 2012, 5:50 PM UTC

photomatt wrote: post #119

krmmalik wrote: post #104

Question for photomatt if you're still reading this comment thread, and since it might be my only chance to get dialog with you. Are you considering any changes regards the stack, since many installations can have a issues with speed now (not intended as a criticism). So eg something like Postgres, or MongoDB even for the DB Backend?

Running WP.com, I'm very sensitive too the performance implications of our stack. A small percentage change in performance could mean the difference of racks of servers for us. At Automattic we've also had a peek behind the curtain of pretty much every high-scale WP installation out there. The vast majority of performance issues I've seen are not from something intrinsic to PHP or MySQL, but how people configure them…

Would you consider moving to a database abstraction layer ? There are many of us here who are running postgres in production already and would like nothing better than to maintain one database engine that we can run and maintain.

Again - I'm not advocating that you switch the default, but if switching database engines is not your bottleneck, then would you be willing to consider that option (maybe Kickstarter it)

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#132

Post by JagMicker » Mon, Nov 05, 2012, 5:50 PM UTC

gozmike wrote: post #68

photomatt wrote: post #61

I really like some of the things John has done in his mockups here, especially on the write screen, and contrary to what he thinks ideas like this are more than welcome in the WordPress community. (For example check out the dramatically revamped media or the dozens of eliminated options in trunk right now.) The one big mistake in his premise, however, is that only 34% of WordPress users are blogging, the actual perce…

Is it safe to say that without a vastly improved mobile experience WordPress is in serious trouble? As a huge fan of the WordPress community and what the software and platform has empowered, I'm seeing a decreasing amount of interest in blogging as my social network turns toward meme-sharing and 140-character quips simply because they're much more conducive to consumption and sharing on mobile. It's so bad that there…

I used to think that "mobile responsiveness" was the "Holy Grail" of smart website design. Now, I've come to the conclusion that most modern mobile devices are completely capable of displaying the full version of most websites.

Every time I use my iPhone to browse to Twitter or LinkedIn I'm taken away from the full site and to a silly "mobile" site that resembles the native app. If I wanted the native app. experience, I'd download and use it! Ever try approving a LinkedIn recommendation using your iPhone? Good luck!

Now think about most business websites...5 pages of text, images, and a touch of javascript... Does their "full site" have content that cannot be displayed properly on a mobile device? No. Is there a benefit to having a second, "mobile" website (one with much less love put into it)? I think not.

It seems to me that many people think that "mobile responsiveness" is such a great thing, but I'm not sure they've really considered whether it's even necessary. I'd bet that most designers who build WP sites on themes that tout "mobile responsiveness" (and have it enabled by default) haven't even considered whether their client needs the second version of their site. Even if they do, I think often times the "mobile" version ends up being an ugly, hardly-tested, bastardized version of the "full site". Just give us the real website, please!

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#133

Post by dorkrawk » Mon, Nov 05, 2012, 5:54 PM UTC

onli wrote: post #116

You can't make a blog-software without comments. Well, you can try, but it wouldn't be a blog anymore. Letting the most important thing blogs achieve, enabling user-comments, get in the hand of proprietary external companies is totally absurd and a huge loss. That being said, I like the idea of a focussed blogging software. Probably because I sometimes contribute to one: Serendipity ( http://www.s9y.org ). And there…

I agree, the lack of comments stuck out like a sore thumb in an otherwise interesting proposal. There's no reason to take out the existing comment system from WP. It works! The option to disable comments or easily use something like Disqus seems like a fine idea but if you're hosting your own blog, there's a chance you'll want to host your own comments, too.

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#134

Post by dangrossman » Mon, Nov 05, 2012, 5:59 PM UTC

voidfiles wrote: post #118

modernerd wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what the simplified WordPress.com dashboard looks like for those who haven't seen it: http://d.pr/i/xetj You can still access the full nuts-and-bolts dashboard via a drop-down menu, but it's deliberately harder to find, and editing happens in the simplified area by default. I've recommended WordPress.com accounts to a few people recently; I was surprised by this change, but they - having never used WordPress…

What made sense about the Ghost write screen was that it embraced Markdown. It showed what things would look like as you wrote them. I don't think the screenshot of the new WordPress dashboard addresses that.

Markdown isn't for bloggers, it's for developers. The average blogger has never learned an "alternative syntax" in their lives -- a word-processor-like formatting toolbar, like WordPress has, makes much more sense.

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#135

Post by MBCook » Mon, Nov 05, 2012, 6:01 PM UTC

objclxt wrote: post #66

johnonolan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it's a rough concept, and I wanted to put it out as quickly as possible rather than delaying by procrastinating about coding a layout. I actually stole got the idea for making it a big page of images from the original .Mail concept page. If there's interest - of course we could put something more professional (and machine readable) together!

It really put me off. It's not about making it machine-readable, it's about making it human readable for the sizeable number of people who are visually impaired, prefer or need to read in large print, are on high DPI devices, or even copy/paste. It's a massive, huge step backwards. I can't even search the page. I wanted to try and read all of it, but I gave up. I understand that it's quick and dirty, but I don't real…

It's a terrible mistake. I can't read the site on my iPhone. I can't double tap to fit the text to the screen, it fits the image. If I zoom in, the text looks hazy since its not being re-rendered.

Why would anyone do that?

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#136

Post by pjbrunet » Mon, Nov 05, 2012, 6:10 PM UTC

I created a custom blog platform from scratch, a real one ;-) I was thinking about releasing it but got busy with other projects. You can see a sample post here:

http://tomakefast.com/google-not-paying-publishers-for-rich-...

For comments, IntenseDebate. The backend is just four tables: options, posts, categories & feeds. (Yes, it aggregates feeds too.) Index.php does all the front-end work, another php file for the AJAX server, 4 more php files for the backend pages. Basically, interact with the database using AJAX datagrids. I can edit the blog without clicking Publish ;-)

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#137

Post by tripzilch » Mon, Nov 05, 2012, 6:28 PM UTC

onli wrote: post #116

You can't make a blog-software without comments. Well, you can try, but it wouldn't be a blog anymore. Letting the most important thing blogs achieve, enabling user-comments, get in the hand of proprietary external companies is totally absurd and a huge loss. That being said, I like the idea of a focussed blogging software. Probably because I sometimes contribute to one: Serendipity ( http://www.s9y.org ). And there…

Exactly. Comments were the thing that separated blogs from "well-updated homepage" in the first place. While I can see the author's point that WordPress somewhat lost its roots as a blogging platform, if you get rid of commenting, you're also losing those roots, in a different way.

For me, Disqus is not really an option. It feels bloated and loads slow, and I've lost comments to its system many times, often because only after I typed the whole comment it let me know I needed to sign up, and sometimes that didn't work (I don't have Facebook, don't want to sign up with GMail or Twitter, maybe you get a throwaway email if you ask nicely). And then, something goes wrong during the signup procedure, and because the whole thing is made out of dynamic Javascript my post has disappeared and does no longer exist in my browser history forms either.

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#138

Post by nir » Mon, Nov 05, 2012, 6:41 PM UTC

geekfactor wrote: post #45

I'd like to see a fork Ghost as a Rails app. Anyone game?

You know, IIRC the first Rails demo actually used building a blog app as example. 8 years later and still no one has come up with a real Wordpress/Drupal/Mediawiki alternative - or at least none that's gained any significant userbase. I often wonder why..

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#139

Post by tripzilch » Mon, Nov 05, 2012, 6:41 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #127

FuzzyDunlop wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a false logic present in arguing that "lots of people use it, so it's ok even if it's shit." Apply this same argument to one of several poorly coded plugins that have introduced basic security vulnerabilities and had widespread adoption. I think this is even worse when there's no commitment to improving it. I find it curious we don't necessarily aspire to quality; and I think we should. I'm not happy…

Sure, but "working" is a perfectly reasonable lower standard.

Allowing for introducing security vulnerabilities is not at all "reasonable", IMO.

How are end-users supposed to judge whether they just blew an enormous hole in their site, by selecting a plugin from the repo?

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#140

Post by mgkimsal » Mon, Nov 05, 2012, 6:44 PM UTC

goldfeld wrote: post #101

drivingmenuts wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, so I'll just assume the worst. Yes, it is - there's a lot more non-techies than there are of the other kind, so it makes sense that you focus your efforts on the larger market. As for the whole "language that beginners use to learn about programming", do you mean Python or Java? PHP is everywhere but the last I checked, Python and Java are the teaching and taught languag…

Let's switch Java for Javascript and Python for Coffeescript as far as similar syntaxes go. In any case, regardless of existing userbase, doing a forward looking project in backward looking technologies doesn't sound right to me. Go with Node, or Clojure if easily deployable today is a must.

"easily deployable" for Clojure or Node isn't even on the radar for 99% of people.

I go to any $5/month host, check "install wordpress", and it's done. When Clojure CMS/blog apps have even 1% of the installability (as in, ability to be installed) by non-developers, perhaps they'll have a fighting chance.

I say this as someone who develops Grails apps all day long.