Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development
-
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
You need a large learning curve to figure out its secret sauce. You need extra plugins just to be able to build the custom content needed for pages, or a page builder, ACF, Pods, something. Then a deep understanding of a favored theme framework, if you're into those, and all the possible hook locations. Genesis, Gantry, Thesis, Thematic, Divi, whatever your pleasure. You have to learn the hook system as well as the page builder they may or may not use.
Like ALL of IT. WP isn't magic, it can't be. It has the expected learning curve for an enterprise app. It's not hard, nor is it for end users. Again, if you fix your misconception of what WP is and thinking that it is a non-production system for end users (nothing for end users is for production by definition) makes all of your "issues" clearly turn into "good design." Everything you mention as being bad is actually exactly what IT would want. Your tone is one of complaining, but your words tell us how good WP is.
And you don't need all these deep understanding. I run a lot of production WP and have for a very long time, and not one of those things is something we have or need to know. None of it. It's there if we need it, but we don't, not in the real world.
Most of our sites run with about five plugins, and most of those are not necessary, they just help with management or performance. I think you have seen a few total buffoons try to use WP, someone told you it was something that obviously it is not, and you'd missed how normal people have none of these issues. The system basically "just works" with way less knowledge than you'd reasonably expect.
I just logged into my busiest, largest site. Number of plugins: 5. One is internal cache, one is external cache management (totally unneeded), one is SSL handling, one is security, and then one for a theme enhancement. That's it.
WHY do you feel that so many plugins are necessary? Just because you have dealt with someone who is a plugin addict, you can't project that problem onto the platform or other people. That's not a WP problem, it's not a normal problem.
-
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
So every WP site I come across has some new or old framework with an entirely different set of APIs and functions to figure out, because no two sites come together quite the same way. Some have custom admin UIs, some use the Customizer, some are only in the template files, some have child themes, some not. And those that don't use a child theme, you can't be sure whether the main/parent theme was customized or not, so have to be careful doing a theme update.
Again, end user issues, nothing to do with WP.
-
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
We would all like to believe we build WP sites perfectly in April 2019, but in 5 years it will be someone else's nightmare to figure out.
Been doing this a lot longer than that, and no nightmares. Nothing to figure out. And I do migrations for other companies. The issues you are seeing aren't normal, even for a WP hosting company onboarding other people's stuff.
-
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
And this isn't a praiseworthy design feature of WP.
Except, it 100% is. Absolutely. This is what makes WP great. It's why we choose it. It's why people want it. This is totally why WP is praiseworthy.
-
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
I would simply say there are other options out there, people trying to improve the CMS space and do things better.
There are, and some good ones. But all that people consider good have the same, or more, of these "features." Drupla, Joomla... if you think WP is complex and can scale out like mad, just wait till you try alternatives!
-
@scottalanmiller said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
I would simply say there are other options out there, people trying to improve the CMS space and do things better.
There are, and some good ones. But all that people consider good have the same, or more, of these "features." Drupla, Joomla... if you think WP is complex and can scale out like mad, just wait till you try alternatives!
I've done a lot of work with Joomla, quite a few years. I do like it.
Not so much with Drupal, but it's interesting.
-
@Obsolesce said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
@scottalanmiller said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
I would simply say there are other options out there, people trying to improve the CMS space and do things better.
There are, and some good ones. But all that people consider good have the same, or more, of these "features." Drupla, Joomla... if you think WP is complex and can scale out like mad, just wait till you try alternatives!
I've done a lot of work with Joomla, quite a few years. I do like it.
Not so much with Drupal, but it's interesting.
Oh they are fine tools. It's just that they are as big or bigger than WP and even more complex.
-
Sorry, not reading the hundred over-analyzing responses here. I already know WP is garbage so you're not convincing me otherwise, I've worked on too many of the things.
I've had to work on 200+ of the things and there is never one built "right". Everybody has a different idea of "right" or what makes the design/theme/development/workflow "easy". Fact is, with 200 sites, you get 200 different ways a website is built. There is very little consistency. There is no "right" way to build a site in WP.
@Obsolesce said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
It seems to me that all of the "right" stuff you are doing to your WP installs are actually wrong and screwing it up.
I didn't say I was doing this. I work on other peoples' sites. This is what everybody else is doing. Every site is different.
Second, you absolutely should change the admin URL if possible, it's a very simple and basic thing that stops a ton of bot attacks by default. But WP doesn't make it easy, so it's rarely done. And keeping core files out of web root is also a very easy security measure that most modern software do by default, only exposing the public files and index. But WP definitely doesn't make that easy either.
Why would it be that only minutes after creating a brand new user, there are already bots attempting to log in with the username? How would they have found the username of a brand new user who hasn't created any content?Creating a new WP site and not doing a full security stack of plugins would be like doing a fresh install of Windows XP and putting it on the internet with no antivirus!
I don't need to be convinced of WP greatness, it's not worth the effort. We all have our opinions of things. Imagine someone hires you because they spent 4 hours and couldn't figure out how to edit some text in the footer. So you spend another hour and half trying to track it down for them because in WP there is no actual standard place where your templates and output live. It could be anywhere, in plugin UI somewhere, or deep in a PHP template which includes another PHP which includes another PHP which overrides another which hooks another that filters another.
On what planet is a CMS powerful or great when it takes 5.5 hours to find some text in the footer?This is like if you have a flat tire in your car so you try to find the puncture and finally discover the nail is actually under the carpet of the headliner inside the cab. hahah! That's kind of what it feels like to work on an old content-rich WP site sometimes.
I'm glad none of you build sites that way. I don't either, but it's one of the traps often found working on existing ones.
-
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
Sorry, not reading the hundred over-analyzing responses here.
That's hardly what it is. You are not addressing the fact that you have not provided any negatives about it. You've mentioned over and over how great it is, and then used those good things about it to claim it is garbage. You've not explained how all those good things result in a bad product, only that you keep seeing people misuse it and that obviously misused things don't work well.
-
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
I already know WP is garbage so you're not convincing me otherwise, I've worked on too many of the things.
From your approach, it doesn't feel like we need to. Your posts about it make it seem like you know it is good, but are angry at it for some reason.
-
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
I didn't say I was doing this. I work on other peoples' sites. This is what everybody else is doing.
And so you know who is at fault. Why blame the party you know is innocent, WP?
What alternative could you offer?
-
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
Creating a new WP site and not doing a full security stack of plugins would be like doing a fresh install of Windows XP and putting it on the internet with no antivirus!
Um, no. You absolutely don't use some big stack of plugins. Maybe one. Maybe not. That's it.
-
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
Why would it be that only minutes after creating a brand new user, there are already bots attempting to log in with the username?
Um... like any software? That's just everything works. That they don't get it is what makes WP decent.
-
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
We all have our opinions of things. Imagine someone hires you because they spent 4 hours and couldn't figure out how to edit some text in the footer. So you spend another hour and half trying to track it down for them because in WP there is no actual standard place where your templates and output live. It could be anywhere, in plugin UI somewhere, or deep in a PHP template which includes another PHP which includes another PHP which overrides another which hooks another that filters another.
So... you do realize that this is the fault of whoever set it up. Then whoever didn't document. Right?
Imagine blaming the operating system for this? Or the programming language? Or the CMS? Or the hardware? Pretty silly, right? But that's what is happening.
A designer does something wrong. And you randomly blame one piece of the infrastructure, when you know who is at fault - the designer who screwed it up.
-
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
On what planet is a CMS powerful or great when it takes 5.5 hours to find some text in the footer?
You actually think that there is a modern, powerful CMS that isn't like this when the designer screws up? On what planet have you used products?
-
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
I'm glad none of you build sites that way. I don't either, but it's one of the traps often found working on existing ones.
But you are blaming the traps on the product that had nothing to do with it, and acting like the designers who did that, or the people who hired them and didn't care that they did that, are somehow powerless pawns in WordPress' game of hiding code that they didn't write.
-
Simple answer... WordPress is powerful, and anything powerful is useless in the hands of idiots. But the fault lies with the idiots, and no one else.
As an IT pro...
- Be glad that you have a powerful tool with none of the security, complexity, or performance issues you imagine.
- That we get paid to fix problems when idiots make them.
WP is a great option because it benefits us in that we can do a good job when we care, and it provides us a good job when others don't. Win/win. What's missing is any downsides.
-
Here is a good takeaway... if you think WP is bad, or is difficult to manage... don't worry about it, send those customers over to us. There are lots of us here who'd love to have them and don't find any issues managing updates, security, performance, site changes, etc. If you have difficult WP sites and customers, you have a place to send them where we it as no problem at all.
-
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
Second, you absolutely should change the admin URL if possible, it's a very simple and basic thing that stops a ton of bot attacks by default. But WP doesn't make it easy, so it's rarely done. And keeping core files out of web root is also a very easy security measure that most modern software do by default, only exposing the public files and index.
No, you absolutely should not change the Admin URL. That is a total myth and does nothing for security and only breaks things. That is 100% fact. Never do that.
Moving files around also breaks things. You really are screwing up every WP site you touch. No wonder you have problems with it...
-
@Obsolesce said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
Second, you absolutely should change the admin URL if possible, it's a very simple and basic thing that stops a ton of bot attacks by default. But WP doesn't make it easy, so it's rarely done. And keeping core files out of web root is also a very easy security measure that most modern software do by default, only exposing the public files and index.
Moving files around also breaks things. You really are screwing up every WP site you touch. No wonder you have problems with it...
Dude, for the last time, I'm not the one doing these things, this is what is already done on sites I have to work on. This is what everybody else does, because out of 200 developers, there are 200 ways they like to do things or protect things or tweak the file system. Yes, Roots Bedrock is a thing people use to change the file system. Yes, people change the login URL, because at best there are mixed opinions about these security tweaks. There are lots of plugins which do just this, and people install them all the time.
Scott, brother, you need to stop with the hyper analyzing sentence-by-sentence, I can't respond to a dozen individual messages like this.
@scottalanmiller said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
Creating a new WP site and not doing a full security stack of plugins would be like doing a fresh install of Windows XP and putting it on the internet with no antivirus!
Um, no. You absolutely don't use some big stack of plugins. Maybe one. Maybe not. That's it.
If you build WP sites with one plugin, you're definitely doing it wrong. WP doesn't have enough core features to run a decent site without various multiple plugins. If a site even wants to have ecommerce, they already need Woo, an import plugin, a payment plugin, some cart feature plugins, a shipper plugin, etc. Everybody runs Yoast or some other SEO plugin. A cache plugin, performance plugins, image optimizer, social networks, analytics.
I've never even seen a WP site with just one plugin. You don't even get just one on a fresh install!@scottalanmiller said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
@guyinpv said in Top 10 Advantages of Using Wordpress for Website Development:
On what planet is a CMS powerful or great when it takes 5.5 hours to find some text in the footer?
You actually think that there is a modern, powerful CMS that isn't like this when the designer screws up? On what planet have you used products?
That's the problem, the footer text being hard to find wasn't a screw up of the designer, it's just the way they had to do it based on WP lack of consistency and how all their plugins and theme stuff interact and there is no actual "template" anywhere.
It's ok to not try and convince me how "powerful" WP is, I'm aware of how it works, I've laid out many points already. I'm painfully aware of its problems, for 10+ years now.
