A case for something, anything more simple than WordPress
colin.getbarley.com
A case for something, anything more simple than WordPress
1–10 of 51 posts
Re: A case for something, anything more simple than WordPress
#2I used WordPress for a while, but switched to a host of static site generators about two years ago. One of the big reasons I switched was because WordPress was so huge, and unnecessarily so.
Their big overhaul of the wp-admin section, in 2.5 I think, de-emphasized the post writing page (something which was previously instantly accessible). That's what started pushing me away from WordPress.
Recently I've started looking for another server-side platform. I've been getting annoyed with the extra work involved with static site generators, especially for a rather trivial "look what I saw" blog. I installed Anchor [1] last night, and plan on playing with it. I'm also interested in Ghost, but it hasn't been publicly released so far as I know.
[1]: Anchor CMS: http://anchorcms.com
Re: A case for something, anything more simple than WordPress
#3About a year ago I moved my blog completely off of Wordpress and onto Piecrust[0]. I realized I didn't need all the dynamic tools available in Wordpress, because blog, and Piecrust has so far worked beautifully.
Comments were replaced with Disqus. No more opening my site to any possible security holes, no more having to keep on top of plugin updates, no more crying tears of shame when I snuck a peek at said plugins' source code, I can check in my whole site into github and be done with it.
Re: A case for something, anything more simple than WordPress
#4I'm using Wordpress for a project because of the wealth of existing templates and plugins. Without these Wordpress is not terribly interesting; it's not Wordpress.
Once you drop the ecosystem there are plenty of alternative to creating static or near-static sites.
edit: I should point out that more alternatives for creating Web content is, on average, a Good Thing. Presenting a tool, however good, as an alternative to Wordpress however brings a lot of assumptions that may cause people to focus on the wrong things.
There's probably a market for a form of Wordpress that could use existing themes but not plugins, and only allowed basic posts and pages, with perhaps a more robust security model. E.g. prevent commenting (in order to avoid having to accept external content) except via Disqus or something.
Re: A case for something, anything more simple than WordPress
#5The first comment on the article is by Jason Schuller, who created a great little open source blogging platform called Dropplets (http://dropplets.com/).
I use it myself and it's fantastic. Simple and elegant and I feel in control of my blog now- there's no magic.
Re: A case for something, anything more simple than WordPress
#6[deleted]
Re: A case for something, anything more simple than WordPress
#7I agree that WordPress is a little convoluted for simple projects. However, you can get great starter themes that eliminate that complexity for you from the get-go. Like the _s starter theme or something like Bones.
I think WordPress is often the go-to platform because it's just what people hear about -- plus, it's free. My preferred CMS for websites is ExpressionEngine because it's flexible enough to make it what you want. There's no "loop" that you have to deal with over and over and there aren't a gajillion default things that you have to strip out at the outset of a project.
The trouble is that clients are afraid to try something that isn't what their neighbor is using. I often get, "Yah, but this is what I used in a past project." or "A buddy of mine used WordPress and he gets 10 million hits a day!" Getting them to pay $299 for a commercial license for EE seems like a really steep cost when they could just get WordPress for free and it's "good enough."
Re: A case for something, anything more simple than WordPress
#8I'm liking Ghost so far, but it's still a very early release and yet to include some base features
Re: A case for something, anything more simple than WordPress
#9The problem with this post, and other "WordPressis too complex" posts like it, is that WordPress did not intially start off this way. Wordprrss was originially a simple blog. Once Barley gets enough users, people will want it to do more and more things until it becomes yet another blog turned CMS platform.
As for me, I use Jekyll and disqus because I'm just one guy.
Re: A case for something, anything more simple than WordPress
#10I think Anchor CMS has done a nice job of filling this space. It's FAR from complex.