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WP21

ma.tt

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Re: WP21

#11

Post by pests »

thomasfromcdnjs wrote: post #8
thisisjaymehta wrote: post #5

To be honest, I never found WordPress easy to use. It's all flowers and rainbows as long as I can find good themes and plugins. However, it starts going south as soon as I need to make a very small custom change.

I've always considered myself an above average web developer, my friends would always have Wordpress websites, and ask me if I can just tweak a few things. Without hesitation, I'd proclaim I could easily make those changes! Then I'd load their site, load their plugin/theme code and css files, struggle for hours to get the desired effect, and even if I got it to work, I would break every other part of their site. ---…

I had the exact same thing happen years ago and I've never felt so helpless. Simple banner / color change. Ended up rebuilding the entire site from scratch it was easier.

Once you spend some time in the codebase and understand a bit of its legacy history it gets easier over time. A lot of plugins and solutions are aimed towards non-technical users and a lot of overlap. Where we might just write up some custom HTML others might install 3 plugins to make it work.

Re: WP21

#12

Post by hollerith »

Swizec wrote: post #3

WordPress is my favorite example of "It doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to work" So many cool projects die because people over-complicate the first steps. You can always make it better later if people start using your thing, but first you gotta ship.

Isn't the fact that people started using WP about 25 years ago evidence against "you can always make it better"?

Re: WP21

#14

Post by tambourine_man »

I like Wordpress and it’s the CMS of choice for almost every situation, but Gutenberg has been out for a long time and it’s still far from good enough. Both as an enduser and as a developer.

Re: WP21

#15

Post by dotcoma »

> 1. Simple things should be easy and intuitive, and complex things possible.

Yeah. Like, for example, forcing users to install the "Classic Editor" plugin to use, well, a normal editor that is more than sufficient for a blog.

Re: WP21

#16

Post by fjuan »

Congrats Matt! WordPress enabled lots of people to push their own boundaries in the internet. Looking forward to celebrate the next 21!

Re: WP21

#17

Post by tommica »

WordPress is special - though I don't work with it anymore, I have enjoyed seeing newer developers solve problems with it

Re: WP21

#18

Post by kijin »

pests wrote: post #11
thomasfromcdnjs wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always considered myself an above average web developer, my friends would always have Wordpress websites, and ask me if I can just tweak a few things. Without hesitation, I'd proclaim I could easily make those changes! Then I'd load their site, load their plugin/theme code and css files, struggle for hours to get the desired effect, and even if I got it to work, I would break every other part of their site. ---…

I had the exact same thing happen years ago and I've never felt so helpless. Simple banner / color change. Ended up rebuilding the entire site from scratch it was easier. Once you spend some time in the codebase and understand a bit of its legacy history it gets easier over time. A lot of plugins and solutions are aimed towards non-technical users and a lot of overlap. Where we might just write up some custom HTML ot…

The overlap between plugins is crazy. It looks like every plugin comes with an entire SEO toolkit, a performance optimizer, a firewall and the kitchen sink. Unless you're very careful, you quickly end up with an unusable house with 5 kitchen sinks, no fridge, and 1 3/4 ovens that are perpetually trying to burn one another.

Re: WP21

#19

Post by pests »

kijin wrote: post #18
pests wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the exact same thing happen years ago and I've never felt so helpless. Simple banner / color change. Ended up rebuilding the entire site from scratch it was easier. Once you spend some time in the codebase and understand a bit of its legacy history it gets easier over time. A lot of plugins and solutions are aimed towards non-technical users and a lot of overlap. Where we might just write up some custom HTML ot…

The overlap between plugins is crazy. It looks like every plugin comes with an entire SEO toolkit, a performance optimizer, a firewall and the kitchen sink. Unless you're very careful, you quickly end up with an unusable house with 5 kitchen sinks, no fridge, and 1 3/4 ovens that are perpetually trying to burn one another.

I think half the problem there is everyone offering half a house for free, but every company is offering a different half. No one wants to pay for the paid offerings that have all the features, they install one SEO plugin to get page metadata, another to get structured data / microdata, another to optimize keywords; when all they had to do was buy the premium version of Yoost, for example.

Thankfully there was a recent consolidation in a plugin called Admin & Site Enhancements (ASE). Probably got rid of 10 others with this thing. Includes duplicate post/page, admin menu cleanups & reorganization, hiding dashboard widgets, cleaning up the top bar, changing the login URL, an easy way to setup SMTP delivery, media replacement, hides the annoying admin notices, and a bunch more.

Re: WP21

#20

Post by graiz »

I wish wordpress did fewer things but did them better. There should be something that is a notch better Jekyll but doesn't get gross when you install a dozen plug-ins. Out of the box wordpress produces a very slow and bandwidth heavy site.
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