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Ghost — rethinking WordPress

john.onolan.org

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Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#141

Post by tripzilch »

avolcano wrote: post #42

Have to say, the most intriguing ideas I saw in the concept were the two "split view" concepts - one for managing blog posts, and one for writing posts. Has any blogging platform implemented anything like that? I know there are Markdown editors with a split view, but I don't know of any that are web-based, nor any that are integrated into existing blogging platforms. And I've definitely never seen any "manage/edit ol…

From an aesthetic point of view, I'd really want the Markdown code to be more visually distinct from the preview.

I'd love something like the "Oblivion" colours in gedit for instance, although I am aware that opinions differ on dark backgrounds :) It would give a nice visual distinction though, like the old "underwater" mode in WordPerfect.

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#142

Post by rhizome »

tripzilch wrote: post #139
rhizome wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Since there are always bugs, all code is an opportunity for security vulnerabilities. Users take their site security into their own hands whenever they have to trust others' code, as well as trusting their own coding skills (if applicable).

Time to reflect upon a classic of the genre: http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html

There is an entire WP ecosystem of people having to judge whether they blew an enormous hole in their sites by selecting one of the zillions of plugins available, why is this one different?

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#143

Post by wildmXranat »

ringmaster wrote: post #100
johnonolan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been committing code to the core WordPress codebase for 3 years, so while I'm not a PHP developer - I have some idea. Perhaps one thing overlooked in the argument for fork vs new build is that there aren't a huge number of developers with the skills to make this happen who would do it entirely on an Open Source contribution basis as opposed to, say, a startup basis. Appealing to existing WordPress developers, bu…

First, let me say this: I love what you've done with the Ghost design. I think it's clean and useful. More on this below... I am one of the early contributors to WordPress (you'll see my name on wp.org's About page near the bottom), and one of the founders of the Habari Project. We started the Habari Project for many explicit reasons, but in part because the curators of the project (Automattic) were not behaving in a…

I looked at the code, installed a test site and read the Wiki. Is this project on a down low at the moment with only 19 commits and low activity since late last year ?

Also, when you mention that you manage to pay the bills with development of habari powered sites, do you draw from a community need for habari developers or are these clients that you persuade to use habari ? I'm curious about the overall community and where it's going.

Thanks !

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#144

Post by mseebach »

johnonolan wrote: post #28
mseebach wrote: post #24

"People often say that WordPress is free as in speech, not as in beer" Do they? What do they mean? Can't you download the full, working source code of Wordpress anymore?

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

Yes? That page says that GPL'd software is free software. WordPress is GPL'd. TFA seems to imply there's something unfree about WP, I'm trying to find out what it means by that.

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#145

Post by mseebach »

qeorge wrote: post #32
mseebach wrote: post #24

"People often say that WordPress is free as in speech, not as in beer" Do they? What do they mean? Can't you download the full, working source code of Wordpress anymore?

The author has the saying backwards. WP is free as in beer (you don't pay for it) but not as in speech (you can't do whatever you want with it because of the GPL).

It can't be that. He wants to fork WP, so the resulting software would also be GPL.

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#146

Post by goldfeld »

mgkimsal wrote: post #140
goldfeld wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Granted I don't know the state of Clojure, but I thought running on the JVM would make it easily deployable most anywhere. Of course then having a blog engine or cms built in Clojure that's easy to install is another problem, but this thread is exactly discussing such a solution.

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#147

Post by mortenjorck »

calinet6 wrote: post #17
ck2 wrote: post #7

The whole page is images, and it's a non-existent product, it's just a theory/proposal. Buried in the text is it would be a fork of wordpress . Net is filled with that sentiment, but it never takes off: http://www.google.com/search?q=fork+wordpress&tbo=1&... If you want to replace wordpress you need a modern rewrite, not a fork. The #1 problem of wordpress (among many) is it loads every darn thing on every darn page…

This would absolutely be better solved by an entirely new application, written from the ground up. And the whole-page-is-images thing really bothered me too. Some nice designs and interesting ideas for sure, and knowing CSS isn't a prerequisite for being a designer, but damn, I have some doubts about the understanding of the technologies here. Which is probably exactly where the concept of "forking Wordpress" came fr…

No need to either fork Wordpress or write anything from the ground up – build it on top of ProcessWire (http://processwire.com).

A small distributed team could probably build basic Ghost functionality in a couple of weeks based on PW.

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#148

Post by papsosouid »

JagMicker wrote: post #132
gozmike wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Don't confuse "mobile responsiveness" with people doing it wrong. Your website should never, under any circumstances try to look and feel like an app. All that does is set behavioural expectations in the user that will not and can not be met. It should look like your website, just with some presentation changes to make it easier to get to the content you want on a device with a smaller screen and touch based input.

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#149

Post by sirclueless »

gozmike wrote: post #90
kayoone wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agree, you can also clearly see this in how platforms like tumblr have "evolved" to be peoples place to share short attention-span stuff. Blogging is becoming more of a mixture of FB feeds/twitter for most people.

this saddens me. the promise of blogging for me has always been the ability to have my own printing press and know that nearly everyone else in the world had access to one as well. i'm still trying to understand how this "evolution" has actually decreased the quality of communication.

    the promise of blogging for me has always been
    the ability to have my own printing press and know
    that nearly everyone else in the world had access
    to one as well.
You say this and you are surprised that the average level of quality of published material went down? There's almost no way it could do anything else. There are a whole bunch of excellent blogs out there that wouldn't exist otherwise, and there is obviously a lot more communication nowadays. That's where you win: there's a lot more communication, some of which is excellent. Of course the average was higher when there was a higher barrier to entry, but that's not the important metric.

Re: Ghost — rethinking WordPress

#150

Post by papsosouid »

mgkimsal wrote: post #140
goldfeld wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>I go to any $5/month host, check "install wordpress", and it's done.

That is a function of popularity, not language. If some blogging app had a userbase the size of wordpress's, it wouldn't matter if it were written in PHP or brainfuck, shared hosting providers will set it up. This is why appealing to techies makes sense. They will be the ones setting it up in the initial "its not popular yet" phase, and if they don't use it, it will never get off the ground. Once they start setting it up for their friends/family/etc, a few companies start offering it as an option for their hosting. Then a few more, and it snowballs as the app gets more and more popular. Trying to start from "use PHP so end users will use it" doesn't work, because installing a PHP app is just as hard for them as installing anything else.

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