WordPress now runs a quarter of the web • Hacker News Board

Re: WordPress now runs a quarter of the web

#111

Post by neurostimulant » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 2:37 PM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #102

picozeta wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your points, but always wonder why shared hosting is often PHP/MySQL only. E.g. if you are using Python, say Django or Flask, and want to outsource your devops (i.e. shared hosting) you do not have many options. Of course, there is pythonanywhere or you might want to use PAAS like Heroku, but I find it interesting non the less. Is it so much more work for shared hosting providers to provide Python?

I provide shared hosting for some clients. The simple answer is that the last time I looked I couldn't find good documentation for getting Python (and Ruby) support working side-by-side with a modern LAMP stack. Most Python (and Ruby) hosting-related documentation assumed nginx, which, while I like it otherwise, still lacked good support for .htaccess files, which are a must-have when providing hosting for people usi…

Take a look at webfaction. They support apache+php as well as a host of other languages and frameworks (python+django, ruby+rails) by treating them as separate webapp (e.g. each php websites run their own apache instance under local linux user) and uses nginx as reverse proxy in front of those webapps.

Re: WordPress now runs a quarter of the web

#112

Post by tim333 » Mon, Nov 09, 2015, 3:13 PM UTC

picozeta wrote: post #32

CM30 wrote: post #16

It's not that surprising to be honest. WordPress' success comes down to the following: 1. It was simple to use in an era where CMS meant 'large, complicated system that was tailored towards technies rather than the general population'. It didn't have a ton of features, but it was easy to use for the average blogger wanting to write posts without worrying about all the setup and coding and what not. 2. You could prett…

I agree with your points, but always wonder why shared hosting is often PHP/MySQL only. E.g. if you are using Python, say Django or Flask, and want to outsource your devops (i.e. shared hosting) you do not have many options. Of course, there is pythonanywhere or you might want to use PAAS like Heroku, but I find it interesting non the less. Is it so much more work for shared hosting providers to provide Python?

>why shared hosting is often PHP/MySQL only

PHP was designed from the ground up to work well on shared hosting with things like restrictions on CPU and memory use so one user wouldn't bring down the others. Here's PHP's inventor explaining:

https://youtu.be/6uodrhwUXFM?t=10m48s

Re: WordPress now runs a quarter of the web

#113

Post by DrewAPicture » Wed, Nov 11, 2015, 9:20 AM UTC

andrebalza1 wrote: post #24

jachob wrote: post #18

... And still no decoupling and no real API. Wordpress is locked down by its own mass of users and just can't evolve. Too big to fail ?

V2 Api ( http://v2.wp-api.org ) will be merged into wordpress 4.4 core, planned for december 2015

It's already been merged into trunk ;)

Re: WordPress now runs a quarter of the web

#114

Post by DrewAPicture » Wed, Nov 11, 2015, 9:30 AM UTC

rebootthesystem wrote: post #85

I must admit ignorance here. I've installed WP a couple of times but never went live with it or did anything past poking around. Here's my hangup: I can't understand why one would start with a blogging platform, pound at it with various plugins and transform it into, say, a product/ecommerce website. It feels like starting with a shovel when you need a pick (or some other more applicable analogy). That's the part I d…

The first problem is pigeon-holing it as a blogging platform that you have to bolt stuff onto. There's a lot more to WordPress than blogging these days. The origins are still there, sure, but fewer and fewer sites these days are using that as a starting place.

> On the funny end of the scale, I've seen five page static websites with a landing page, a few info pages and a form done with WP. Unbelievable. Are developers that lazy today that they throw WP at everything?

I see some version of this question all the time. The main problem is that you're thinking about it from a development perspective only. The major thing WordPress brings to the table is democratization of publishing from the user perspective. You see a five page site some dev built and wonder where the benefit is. The benefit is that the actual owner of the site, the "user" can easily control, modify, add-on-to, or remove that content. They can easily turn it into a 10-page site if they want to.

With some of these other less user-friendly systems (such as static site generators), control largely rests in the hands of developers, with WordPress, it rests with the content owners.