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WordPress 5.0: A Gutenberg FAQ

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Re: WordPress 5.0: A Gutenberg FAQ

#11

Post by scrollaway »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #3
pmlnr wrote: post #2

I seriously dislike the fact that an exteremely wide-spread open source project - wordpress.org - is driven by a for-profit company, wordpress.com. I guess there's no way around it, given Automattic employs most contributors, but this is not the first time when community requests and doubts are ignored (see emojis, half-baked media library refactoring, etc). On the other hand, I'd welcome if these forced changes woul…

I've been looking hard for an open source replacement for the backend that would let my users edit as simply as with WordPress, but not tie my hands with PHP and an odd API for creating the front end. But so far, I haven't found anything that meets users needs like WordPress does. I wish there were more competition in this space. The closest I've seen--different services that let you create content and provide a Grap…

Hi, check out Ghost.

https://ghost.org/

- It's a blog engine with support for static pages.

- It's open source (NodeJS)

- It's self-hostable.

- It's beautiful out of the box.

- It's entirely customizable.

- It's markdown-powered with a great WYSIWYG editor.

- There's no data lock in; excellent import/export support.

I could go on. Just give it a shot. "Ghost Pro" (https://ghost.org/pricing/) from the official team is a bit pricy if you're saying you want something cheap, but Digital Ocean has a two-click-setup droplet for a self-hosted version (seriously, I tried it, it's ridiculously simple). Referral link with $100 DO credit if you are interested: https://m.do.co/c/ea4165209ae0

Some examples of small customizations of the default "Casper" theme:

https://articles.hsreplay.net/

https://spreadprivacy.com/

https://blog.mozvr.com/

More of their customers: https://ghost.org/customers/

Re: WordPress 5.0: A Gutenberg FAQ

#12

Post by EnderMB »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #3
pmlnr wrote: post #2

I seriously dislike the fact that an exteremely wide-spread open source project - wordpress.org - is driven by a for-profit company, wordpress.com. I guess there's no way around it, given Automattic employs most contributors, but this is not the first time when community requests and doubts are ignored (see emojis, half-baked media library refactoring, etc). On the other hand, I'd welcome if these forced changes woul…

I've been looking hard for an open source replacement for the backend that would let my users edit as simply as with WordPress, but not tie my hands with PHP and an odd API for creating the front end. But so far, I haven't found anything that meets users needs like WordPress does. I wish there were more competition in this space. The closest I've seen--different services that let you create content and provide a Grap…

There are loads of content management systems that follow the same model.

My favourite is Umbraco, which to date is still my favourite editing experience. If you can stomach .NET, it's probably the best choice for an open-source CMS available right now.

Re: WordPress 5.0: A Gutenberg FAQ

#13

Post by onion2k »

pmlnr wrote: post #2

I seriously dislike the fact that an exteremely wide-spread open source project - wordpress.org - is driven by a for-profit company, wordpress.com. I guess there's no way around it, given Automattic employs most contributors, but this is not the first time when community requests and doubts are ignored (see emojis, half-baked media library refactoring, etc). On the other hand, I'd welcome if these forced changes woul…

I seriously dislike the fact that an exteremely wide-spread open source project - wordpress.org - is driven by a for-profit company, wordpress.com.

Every major open source project from the Linux kernel to a popular web framework has corporate sponsors that profit from the work done on it. Profit is a powerful motivator.

Re: WordPress 5.0: A Gutenberg FAQ

#14

Post by GeneralMaximus »

I know a lot of people dislike PHP and WordPress, but I haven't found _anything_ that comes close to it in terms of sheer extensibility and plugin ecosystem. There's a plugin for pretty much anything you might want to do with a platform. I even moved my personal Jekyll-powered blog to WordPress a few years ago.

My favorite thing about WordPress is that it's a known quantity. There's an easy to follow tutorial teaching you pretty much anything you might want to do with the software. PHP isn't the prettiest language, and WordPress itself feels a bit creaky at times. But it's a practical tool. It does the job, and does it very well.

Since I'm a JavaScript developer, I was optimistic about Ghost becoming a viable alternative to WordPress. Sadly, Ghost's plugin API still doesn't seem to be complete. Without that, it can't replace WordPress for anything besides basic blogging. That seems to be the niche the Ghost developers are interested in, though, so I don't think it's coming anytime soon.

I'm really excited to see this release. Gutenberg is certainly a step in the right direction for the editor, and I'm planning to upgrade all my websites over the next few weeks!

Re: WordPress 5.0: A Gutenberg FAQ

#15

Post by joekrill »

GeneralMaximus wrote: post #14

I know a lot of people dislike PHP and WordPress, but I haven't found _anything_ that comes close to it in terms of sheer extensibility and plugin ecosystem. There's a plugin for pretty much anything you might want to do with a platform. I even moved my personal Jekyll-powered blog to WordPress a few years ago. My favorite thing about WordPress is that it's a known quantity. There's an easy to follow tutorial teachin…

You're absolutely right. The big issue (for me, at least), is that it's a security nightmare. At least last I used it. It seemed there were security exploits popping up every day. Either from the core codebase, or from some random plugin everyone seemed to be using. I think that was just the nature of how their plugin system works? I'm not sure if anything's changed, but _maintaining_ a WordPress install is not fun and requires constant - almost tiring - oversight.

Re: WordPress 5.0: A Gutenberg FAQ

#16

Post by pmlnr »

onion2k wrote: post #13
pmlnr wrote: post #2

I seriously dislike the fact that an exteremely wide-spread open source project - wordpress.org - is driven by a for-profit company, wordpress.com. I guess there's no way around it, given Automattic employs most contributors, but this is not the first time when community requests and doubts are ignored (see emojis, half-baked media library refactoring, etc). On the other hand, I'd welcome if these forced changes woul…

I seriously dislike the fact that an exteremely wide-spread open source project - wordpress.org - is driven by a for-profit company, wordpress.com. Every major open source project from the Linux kernel to a popular web framework has corporate sponsors that profit from the work done on it. Profit is a powerful motivator.

There's a difference when there are multiple contributors, as such with the linux kernel; in that case, the power is not with one single entity.

Re: WordPress 5.0: A Gutenberg FAQ

#18

Post by caseydm »

joekrill wrote: post #15
GeneralMaximus wrote: post #14

I know a lot of people dislike PHP and WordPress, but I haven't found _anything_ that comes close to it in terms of sheer extensibility and plugin ecosystem. There's a plugin for pretty much anything you might want to do with a platform. I even moved my personal Jekyll-powered blog to WordPress a few years ago. My favorite thing about WordPress is that it's a known quantity. There's an easy to follow tutorial teachin…

You're absolutely right. The big issue (for me, at least), is that it's a security nightmare. At least last I used it. It seemed there were security exploits popping up every day. Either from the core codebase, or from some random plugin everyone seemed to be using. I think that was just the nature of how their plugin system works? I'm not sure if anything's changed, but _maintaining_ a WordPress install is not fun a…

I agree security issues are the main drawback. This can be mitigated by using managed hosting providers. I've had several wordpress sites running on managed hosts for years with little oversight and no issues.

Re: WordPress 5.0: A Gutenberg FAQ

#19

Post by pmlnr »

GeneralMaximus wrote: post #14

I know a lot of people dislike PHP and WordPress, but I haven't found _anything_ that comes close to it in terms of sheer extensibility and plugin ecosystem. There's a plugin for pretty much anything you might want to do with a platform. I even moved my personal Jekyll-powered blog to WordPress a few years ago. My favorite thing about WordPress is that it's a known quantity. There's an easy to follow tutorial teachin…

WordPress is very nice until you hit a niche problem: the media library has a lot of hooks that are not applied on the backend (and the media library itself is seriously dated); the XML library that can't handle a newline before I'm having high hopes for the ClassicPress fork to eliminate these bumps, but the future of WordPress.org will be interesting, especially that gutenberg breaks backwards compatibility, which breaks a lot of plugins, meaning you either go Classic Editor and your plugins, or Gutenberg and, maybe, some of your plugins.

Re: WordPress 5.0: A Gutenberg FAQ

#20

Post by wtmt »

Maybe I’m in the minority here. Is this the “new editor coming soon” on wordpress.com blogs? If yes, I tried it and was left more confused than before (features like copying an existing post with its categories, tags and content in order to create a new post were missing). So I switched back. I’ve found WordPress becoming more complicated to administer and use over the years. I hope aiming towards simplicity doesn’t inadvertently add more complexity.
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