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WooThemes joins Automattic

woothemes.com

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Re: WooThemes joins Automattic

#151

Post by csixty4 »

Domenic_S wrote: post #88
MichaelTieso wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't go into detail on that here but know that there's a very good reason for it. Plugin and theme developers should be using for example `esc_url( home_url( '/' ) );` when requiring the URL of the site.

Ok, as someone who's battled with this... feature... of WP I am super curious as to the very good reason for storing the domain in the DB. Why couldn't links be relative (no need to know the domain), or set only as a sitewide variable in wp-config.php? edit: and just discovered the 'guid' column on the posts table is hardcoded as the URL of the post -- the domain you're on at the time you create the content + the pos…

> just discovered the 'guid' column on the posts table is hardcoded as the URL of the post

It comes up every so often. The WordPress devs are well aware of the platform's warts & WTFs. People have talked for a while about replacing it with a proper UUID, but there are way too many themes & plugins that use the guid field to get the post's URL instead of calling, say, get_permalink( $post_id ).

So now the devs are stuck. You can deprecate "guid", but you can't get rid of it. You can't replace the URL with a UUID because of backwards compatibility with third-party code. Do you add a "uuid" column? Now you have a guid column & a uuid column and people are going to get even more confused.

Right now, content staging is a bit of an edge case and folks who need it are able to store a UUID in a post_meta field. So it's not a really critical issue. But it would definitely be nice to see a proper UUID in core.

Some relevant Trac tickets:

Guids No Longer Have Permalink Format (discusses changing the format) https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6492

Non-URL GUIDs are stripped on post update https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/18395

Re: WooThemes joins Automattic

#152

Post by nhangen »

aikah wrote: post #37

I'm fascinated by Wordpress success. It's an horrible peace of software, with horrible PHP code 4.x style, a db schema only a beginner could have come up with and an ecosystem with a lot of trash(not even talking about the admin which is hideous ). Yet it's a blazing success in the CMS space, because of 3 things that are insanely overlooked by other CMS developers : - Ease of installation - It runs on a minimal PHP/A…

I am not a fan of this acquisition, but I'm really disappointed that this is the most upvoted reply on this story.

It reads like sour grapes, and what's worse is that it has nothing to do with the story itself. I thought the HN mods were actively trying to fix things like this:

http://blog.ycombinator.com/new-hacker-news-guideline

Re: WooThemes joins Automattic

#153

Post by morgante »

bwb wrote: post #137
morgante wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's true however that while Wordpress gets a lot of heat from PHP devs, there is no effort from the PHP community to build something like Wordpress with a better codebase, and a better db schema. That's not true. Several ex-WordPress developers started the Habari Project to build a modern and clean PHP CMS: http://habariproject.org/en/

WP has a huge and massive ecosystem, it is it's own economy. Someone might write something better from a code perspective, but it is going nowhere unless it can gain the critical mass WP did.

Oh, I'm well aware of why the WP hegemony continues. Just wanted to point out that it's not through lack of alternatives.

Re: WooThemes joins Automattic

#154

Post by Viper007Bond »

nacs wrote: post #21
MBCook wrote: post #16

Going in not knowing who Automattic is (although I know of WooThemes)... I still don't know who Automattic is. That seems like basic information I'd expect to see.

Automattic is the company behind Wordpress (and Gravatar and a few other things).

Behind WordPress.com specifically. The WordPress(.org) open-source software project isn't owned by anyone, although both have the same founder and many Automattic employees are contributors to the software.

Re: WooThemes joins Automattic

#155

Post by alexweber »

edwinyzh wrote: post #128
camworld wrote: post #23

This is a really smart acquisition. WordPress continues to dominate the CMS market. With the upcoming REST API, it's only going to get better. I'm watching niche CMS industry after niche CMS industry crumble under the continual migration to WordPress. The latest victims are the small CMS vendors who have been selling proprietary CMS solutions to public school districts for the past 15 years, charging far too much mon…

Is this the REST API you are talking about: wp-api.org

Here's a link to a recent update from the Make WordPress Core blog: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/05/18/wp-rest-api-versi...

Re: WooThemes joins Automattic

#156

Post by georgestephanis »

andrea_sdl wrote: post #138
aikah wrote: post #37

I'm fascinated by Wordpress success. It's an horrible peace of software, with horrible PHP code 4.x style, a db schema only a beginner could have come up with and an ecosystem with a lot of trash(not even talking about the admin which is hideous ). Yet it's a blazing success in the CMS space, because of 3 things that are insanely overlooked by other CMS developers : - Ease of installation - It runs on a minimal PHP/A…

I believe that, even though some of the code is so old, Automattic is doing a great job moving the game forward. Take the Jetpack plugin for example. It is a super-great plugin with many features that are good and low on memory in the system. If you take a look at the Jetpack code you'll see some improvements over there. It will take time to rewrite the whole wordpress code without breaking chances, but for now I can…

Please don't recommend Thesis to folks. :\ Genesis or X are better more modern options.

Re: WooThemes joins Automattic

#157

Post by andrea_sdl »

georgestephanis wrote: post #156
andrea_sdl wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that, even though some of the code is so old, Automattic is doing a great job moving the game forward. Take the Jetpack plugin for example. It is a super-great plugin with many features that are good and low on memory in the system. If you take a look at the Jetpack code you'll see some improvements over there. It will take time to rewrite the whole wordpress code without breaking chances, but for now I can…

Please don't recommend Thesis to folks. :\ Genesis or X are better more modern options.

The more the better :) I just used thesis as an example mostly because I tried it and used it.

No experience with Genesis/X that's why.

Re: WooThemes joins Automattic

#158

Post by mercer »

rhblake wrote: post #105
mgkimsal wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just impossible to match it with the number of extensions It's almost precisely because there's very little uniformity between anything. It's often much more efficient to just install a new wordpress, migrate some content over and start 'fresh' than it is to modify an existing theme with new functionality; just find a different theme that does what you want and migrate your content and images over to that. Tha…

CCK has been part of Drupal core since version 7 (2011). Now simply known as "fields". Fields+views is simply fantastic compared to what WordPress - including its plugins - gives you. (Views will by the way be in Drupal 8 core.)

In my experience the problem with Drupal is that on the one hand it's too customizable, and on the other it will never beat a proper code-based framework in actual ease of customization.

Because it's so customizable, it's admin interface is too complex for many users. It has to be to be as customizable as it is. And to get a site going you often need to do a whole bunch of work up-front: configuring views, creating content types, taxonomies, rules, workflows, etc. This is often not needed with Wordpress because you just pick a theme, dump in a few plugins if necessary, and it 'works'.

On the other hand, if you really do need all that customization, you're often better off with a proper framework like Ruby on Rails. You can build features in code rather than clicking around the CCK/Fields/Views interfaces, and keep them and other configuration in version control. Most importantly, if you're capable of building complex views and workflows in Drupal, you probably have the ability to do so in code as well. And the latter is generally better in every way if you are capable of it.

Drupal strikes me as the kind of thing that looks good on paper, and that project managers would like, because in theory it can be customized by anyone, and in theory you can build anything you need with it, all without writing code!

In practice, however, you end up paying a lot to get Drupal developers/consultancies to fix whatever mess you're left with. And what do most of these shops do? Use things like the Features module to store everything in code/configuration files, which kind of goes against the whole point of using Drupal in the first place.

The end result is that nobody is really happy, other than perhaps the Drupal consultants who happen to know the ins and outs of the crufty framework/CMS hybrid, and can charge a premium for their knowledge of the dark internals of Drupal.

Re: WooThemes joins Automattic

#159

Post by pbowyer »

mgkimsal wrote: post #89
aikah wrote: post #37

I'm fascinated by Wordpress success. It's an horrible peace of software, with horrible PHP code 4.x style, a db schema only a beginner could have come up with and an ecosystem with a lot of trash(not even talking about the admin which is hideous ). Yet it's a blazing success in the CMS space, because of 3 things that are insanely overlooked by other CMS developers : - Ease of installation - It runs on a minimal PHP/A…

If more PHP "frameworks" had come with a standard registration/login/password reset system, and a semblance of an administration system that could be customized, Wordpress likely would not have achieved such dominance in the period it did. The PHPNuke family almost had it, but focused too much on copying slashdot vs being a bit more open-ended or content-focused. The alternatives have been "build-your-own" frameworks…

I completely agree, but the "serious" developers who create the frameworks don't seem to see it this way. I had exactly this discussion with the Symfony community when Symfony2 was released, but got no traction or support for a RAD-framework on top of the Symfony 'framework'.

If you ever see one, in any language, please let me know!

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