The dire state of WordPress

http://rosslaird.com/blog/first-steps-with-mezzanine/

That's part one, there are several on his site.

Stop trying to do that. If you want a "real" CMS with serious content types and a more thought-out plugin system, go use Drupal (if you have to use PHP and not much time to code). If you have more bones for coding, start with Symfony like your colleagues, or Django, or RoR.

If you have even the faintest inkling that a site will mutate from a blog to something more serious, don't start with Wordpress. If your fundamental data types from day one until infinity are not pages or posts, do not start with Wordpress. You cannot make it into something it's not, even though it's getting so popular that enough people will be tempted to do so.

The reason Wordpress is still so popular is that blogging and basic website creation are still getting more popular, and Wordpress is still a great way to accomplish either of those things since it will be used exactly as intended. I don't anticipate these common needs will shift too much in the near future, and the LAMP stack is just too stable and well-supported to go anywhere, so Wordpress is gonna be around for a long time.

> It is like trying to teach a language that doesn’t have an alphabet

Chinese doesn't have an alphabet. It's used by many people and it's possible to teach to those who use alphabetic languages.

That doesn't mean everybody should learn it, or that it's a model for how a de novo language should be designed today. Use it for what it's good for: talking with Chinese people.

In general, I'd just be more careful with cultural analogies like that.

It's Ruby on Rails based, so that power is always there when you need, but it then adds a flexible templating system for generation of content-editable fields (example here: https://www.wheelhousecms.com/blog/2011/8/flexible-templates...).

There are tons of successful initiatives to create a 'better' CMS. But they suffer from a lack of ready-made modules and a lack of developers 'fluent' in these systems.

In the end, it's about the right tool for the job, and unfortunately Wordpress is often the right tool despite all its issues. If we are caught in the Wordpress ecosystem, then perhaps the best thing to do is to 1) contribute to making it (slightly) less bad, and 2) create best practices for theme and module development, improve documentation, etc.

Why anyone would want to do that is beyond me though, but I deeply respect those who do so, instead of writing their own shiny and clean solution.

As for me, I started with Wordpress, no clue what I was doing, and very basic knowledge of programming. Wordpress worked, and I made a living.

Then I 'upgraded' to Drupal, and loved its flexibility and powerful modules, worked out my own 'admin interface' and happily used this base system for many complex sites. I made a slightly better living.

Then I got into Rails development. I learned about 'environments', TDD, MVC, and so on, and soon realized that Drupal has many, many drawbacks.

(And, as an aside, to configure and maintain these Drupal sites and the interaction of its powerful modules requires a skill and mindset that is about equal to writing (basic) Rails sites or using other frameworks. Except that in Drupal, instead of version-controlled code, you have one giant database and you click click click forever instead of writing a few lines of code.)

Now, I'm doing (in the eyes of many front-enders) weird shit like learning Clojure and Node.js to see what I can do with it, playing with a bunch of different frameworks and CMS offerings, and trying out these new-fangled front-end-heavy buzzwords like Angular, Backbone and Ember.

And yet, if a client has little money, or if I need something quick, I often still opt for Wordpress. It hits the sweet spot. If a client has more money later, well, then I could look into using a framework and rolling out something myself. Drupal, despite it's deceptive initial attractiveness, is almost never a good solution.

I use Wordpress mostly for the client. In the same way that I've inherited Wordpress sites after a developer disappeared, or if a designer couldn't figure it out, I assume others might inherit my projects. If the client has little budget, I really don't want them to be forced to hire expensive Drupal developers, or 'proper' developers who can figure out 'obscure CMS '.

But generally I try to stay away from those clients, if I can help it.

I have also not seen any Wordpress core dev participate on an php-src internals discussion let alone something like the Framework Interoperability Group that outs out the PSRs.

Note I guess it might actually be that I did come across a Wordpress core dev, but maybe they just didnt identify them as such.

But without communication the chances of collaboration are low and without collaboration imho its going to be hard for Wordpress to identify and assess the potential for new directions.

That being said, Wordpress is king of the hill and it at least right now there is no indication of this changing. So changing might just have a ton of risks with maybe little chance of success. Then again I guess AOL once thought quite similar about their position.