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The dire state of WordPress

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Re: The dire state of WordPress

#61

Post by mgkimsal »

runn1ng wrote: post #49
epoxyhockey wrote: post #12

I might be in the minority on HN, but I think that WordPress is doing fine just as it is. Whereas my gag reflex kicks in at the mention of a Drupal contract, WordPress is still pleasant-ish to work with. It's simple enough that I can get my own custom work done without having to spend a ton of time fighting the core system. Though, YMMV depending on the nature of the custom application, I'm sure.

I think it's the perfect example of "worse is better" approach. Yes, it might not be perfect, but it does well what it says it does, it's quite simple to customize and you just upload it online and you are set. Being nice internally is good. Being working with tons of available plugins is better.

I mostly agree, except it's not "simple to customize" in even a majority of cases.

The 'upload and online', however, is and will continue to be the killer feature that will keep rails/python/java/etc-based CMS at a major disadvantage.

Starting projects today, I prefer Grails. Starting a project which I had an intention of distributing to a wide number of users (potentially for eventual world domination), I'd use PHP. Nothing else comes close to the ease of getting the widest number of people able to upload/install.

Re: The dire state of WordPress

#62

Post by mildweed »

Wordpress is making big steps in the right direction.

* Their wild pile of oddly-named functions are being deprecated and moved into well-designed classes.

* Better templating options are being promoted.

* Yes, the global $wp_query leaves some to be desired, but at its core, wpdb's WP_Query is a decently powerful database abstraction, and if used right can perform well at scale.

No, the hooks aren't going away, nor is the URL-to-template mapping. But those are the parts that make it so flexible and easy to work with. MVC is a controller dictatorship, WP's code is a democracy.

Re: The dire state of WordPress

#63

Post by mgkimsal »

bobsy wrote: post #13

As far as I can tell WordPress is stuck. Its success is largely down to the number of theme's and plugins it currently has. You can build pretty much any basic functionality by just installing the plugin's for it. A rewrite would probably benefit the performance and abilities of Wordpress but it would be at the cost of ALL the themes and plugins. The platform would start again from scratch. I don't follow Wordpress t…

It's massively entrenched because of the network effect of the themes and plugins, no doubt. What will overtake wordpress as a blog/cms platform is something that can allow for a large number of the popular themes and plugins to be dropped in (or converted silently). It probably won't happen, but think of Lotus/Excel, for example (or WordPerfect/Word) - both Lotus and WordPerfect were dominant for a long time. People converted when their data/functionality was easily imported in to MSOffice. It's not a perfect comparison, but I suspect this will be what is needed to get people to migrate from Wordpress.

Even that will be an uphill battle, given how many wordpress installs are one-click installs from control panels, somewhat customized to the specifics of that control panel's paths/security/etc.

Re: The dire state of WordPress

#64

Post by rhizome »

JVIDEL wrote: post #53
chc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, most of the free plugins are awful. Many of the paid ones are as well, in fact. Many plugins can bring your site to its knees as soon as five people look at it sideways.

And the templates, some are simply STUNNING it makes you wonder why pro designers charge you so much for stuff that barely holds a candle to stuff you see on WP. Then you install the template and everything goes to shit, you have to read some of the stuff support writes to users, it boils down to "we sold you a broken product and now we will give you just a hint about how to get it to almost work". Still lightyears a…

and now we will give you just a hint about how to get it to almost work

Whenever I've come across situations like this, I assume it's them fishing for consulting hours.

Re: The dire state of WordPress

#65

Post by AznHisoka »

JVIDEL wrote: post #53
chc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, most of the free plugins are awful. Many of the paid ones are as well, in fact. Many plugins can bring your site to its knees as soon as five people look at it sideways.

And the templates, some are simply STUNNING it makes you wonder why pro designers charge you so much for stuff that barely holds a candle to stuff you see on WP. Then you install the template and everything goes to shit, you have to read some of the stuff support writes to users, it boils down to "we sold you a broken product and now we will give you just a hint about how to get it to almost work". Still lightyears a…

Then you install the template, and realize the only reason it looks so good is because they have pretty top notch photos and pages filled with content.

Re: The dire state of WordPress

#66

Post by jmcmichael »

I've used Symphony CMS (getsymphony.com) to build several websites, one of them quite large. I love it. It's the first CMS I've used that isn't a total mess architecturally. At it's core it provides a highly customizable interface for maintaining a database of content, XML data sources that pull from that database (or external XML sources), and XSL templates that are combined with the XML to produce the HTML pages of the site.

It's totally open source, and development is carried out on github (which includes all its extensions (http://symphonyextensions.com/)). The developer forums on the main website are active and many of the core developers answer questions rapidly. I can't recommend it enough.

Its downsides are 1) XSLT (some people can't stand it) 2) No polished off-the-shelf templates, you'll have to roll your own (but it's easy enough to get something up with Bootstrap and tweak it for your purposes).

Re: The dire state of WordPress

#68

Post by analog »

booruguru wrote: post #11
jiggy2011 wrote: post #3

I'm yet to inherit a PHP project that does not contain a file called "functions.php" and it always makes my heart sink when I see it. What I don't get is the demand for all kinds of stuff to be built on top of wordpress that doesn't really have much to do with content management or blogging. For example online games, CRM systems, auction sites etc. Seems a bit like asking for a CMS system that has been implemented as…

People treat WordPress like a Swiss Army Knife because they can. Why build an online directory or CRM or auction site from scratch when you can just use WordPress? It can be a bit sloppy, code-wise, but it works and you can get the job done a lot faster than it would take to do it from scratch. Consider an online business directory. You could just build one from scratch or use some script designed for that purpose bu…

My understanding is that for the more complex examples (CRM, auction site) it doesn't work particularly well. Sure you can do it but if you're having to work with Wordpress internals rather than rely on plugins that someone else has written that's when the pain hits.

Re: The dire state of WordPress

#69

Post by ebbv »

jsdalton wrote: post #7

To paraphrase Churchill, Wordpress is the worst CMS -- except for all the others. I'd love to find an open-source CMS (preferably in Python or Ruby) with clean, secure, elegant code and a well-organized framework that comes with a friendly admin and active, responsive development community like Wordpress, but so far I've got nothing. (If anyone has any suggestions, please do feel free to share them!)

I like ExpressionEngine if what you really want is a CMS.

Re: The dire state of WordPress

#70

Post by [deleted] »

jsdalton wrote: post #7

To paraphrase Churchill, Wordpress is the worst CMS -- except for all the others. I'd love to find an open-source CMS (preferably in Python or Ruby) with clean, secure, elegant code and a well-organized framework that comes with a friendly admin and active, responsive development community like Wordpress, but so far I've got nothing. (If anyone has any suggestions, please do feel free to share them!)

[deleted]
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