9 ms·

The Story Behind the New WordPress.com

260 points by lloydde 11y ago

armandososa 11y ago
Matt's post about the same topic: http://ma.tt/2015/11/dance-to-calypso/ http://ma.tt/2015/11/dance-to-calypso/
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
rralian 11y ago
I'm not sure why the title is referring to Calypso as "experimental." It's the production codebase.
- dang 11y ago
  Given that the submitted title ("Experimental WordPress Calypso Written Purely in JavaScript") broke the HN guidelines, we just reverted it to the article title. Submitters: the HN guidelines ask you to use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait. If you want to say what you think is important about a story, don't do so by rewriting the title—editorializing is against the rules here. Instead, add a comment to the thread, on a level playing field with other commenters.
- lloydde 11y ago
  Sorry, my mistake. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg on his own site describes it more as the project and the "experiment" behind it. My understanding is this can be used as an interface to all WordPress blogs. My take is that although this is acting through WordPress.com as an API intermediary, it is only steps away from peeling out the whole PHP layer for these interfaces. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg described it as: > At the beginning of last year, we decided to start experimenting and see. > Today we’re announcing something brand new, a new approach to WordPress, and open sourcing the code behind it. The project, codenamed Calypso, is the culmination of more than 20 months of work by dozens of the most talented engineers and designers I’ve had the pleasure of working with (127 contributors with over 26,000 commits!). https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso
  - rralian 11y ago
    No worries. I just wanted to make it clear this is not a toe in the water. :-) > My understanding is this can be used as an interface to all WordPress blogs. Yes, that's correct. It works for WordPress.com blogs of course. But self-hosted blogs can also make use of Calypso by installing our Jetpack plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/) which adds some API endpoints that allow Calypso to communicate with the self-hosted site. > it is only steps away from peeling out the whole PHP layer for these interfaces I don't think I would go that far exactly. The php codebase is still there, and users can still use "wp-admin" if they prefer. And the API is also powered by PHP. But now that Calypso only communicates with a site through the API it allows us to separate the view logic and focus on making those endpoints as efficient as possible. I think it's possible the API could be written in a language other than PHP. But that hasn't happened yet and would be a significant task. I should probably mention I am one of the authors, if that wasn't obvious. :-)
    - rralian 11y ago
      Oh yeah, there's also the whole "every page a reader sees" on the front-end of the site.
    - lloydde 11y ago
      > We still have a ton to figure out around plugins, extensibility, contributions, Windows and Linux releases, API speed, localization, and harmonizing the WordPress.com API and WP-API so it can work with core WordPress. Thousands more PHP developers will need to become fluent with JavaScript to recreate their admin interfaces in this fashion. I'm also really excited to revisit and redesign many more screens now that we have this first version out the door. http://ma.tt/2015/11/dance-to-calypso/ http://ma.tt/2015/11/dance-to-calypso/
kingkool68 11y ago
Meh.
pan69 11y ago
OK. So basically this is an Adobe Air-esque app that is a user interface to WordPress which at the moment only works on Mac. I'm sorry but I don't really understand what the value proposition here is, maybe I missed it in the article? WordPress already has a pretty good user interface, which was build in HTML/CSS/Javascript. When people complain about WordPress being an outdated architecture it's not the UI they're referring to..
- jeffgolenski 11y ago
  The desktop app is currently only for Mac, but we're working on other platforms. WordPress.com, which is a very similar experience, is obviously web based and can be used in any browser on any platform. This entire upgrade utilizes the new WordPress rest API and the new WordPress.com is open source.
  - pan69 11y ago
    Sorry, maybe my previous comment wasn't very clear, let me try again; I don't understand what problem this project solves and whom it solves it for. We can already manage multi-site WordPress installations and usually that's done by site admins, not the average content Joe, so does it really need a super fancy new UI? And what exactly does it mean when you say "WordPress.com is open source"? Maybe I'm out of the loop but the way I understand it is that wordpress.com is a hosted (commercial) service of wordpress.org. My experience with WordPress is not that the UI is a problem at all, neither multi site management, which I think is in the scheme of things quite niche. The problem with WordPress I hear other developers complain about is the out dated PHP system architecture.
    - umurkontaci 11y ago
      It exactly means as you hear actually, WordPress.com, as we all know, was written in React, is now open-source. In WordPress.com, "average content Joe", can manage multiple sites, including self-hosted WordPress.org sites (through JetPack plugin). Disclosure: I'm one of the authors.
opendomain 11y ago
This is just "Wordpress.Com" in javascript, not wordpress the blogging software. You have to interface with Wordpress.Com to build your own site. The code references Node.JS for the server side, but only as a proxy.
- fractalsea 11y ago
  From https://developer.wordpress.com/calypso/ https://developer.wordpress.com/calypso/ "If you run your own self-hosted WordPress site, you can install the Jetpack plugin to use the Calypso-based editing and management tools."
nanoojaboo 11y ago
Reading the article once I had no idea if it was a total replacement for the php codebase, or intended to work along side it.
avolcano 11y ago
This must be one of the largest open-sourced React codebases yet, very cool.
msdi 11y ago
It's a web app too. Wordpress.com has been steadily introducing features (through Jetpack) that allow you to manage your installed Wordpress instances - this brings the two together. So you can login to wordpress.com either via the web, apps, Air etc to manage/publish to any types of Wordpress installs. It means that you don't have to use the old wp-admin CMS and can use what they've now built and released.
drapper 11y ago
Never mind the product, look at that list of React components (https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/tree/master/client/components https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/tree/master/client/...)! Any chance this will become a separate framework?
- rralian 11y ago
  I don't know if I would call it a framework per se, but absolutely we want to break off individual pieces that can be separately re-used and make them available for everyone. In the meantime if you see something in particular that you're itching for, open a new issue and let us know. You may also want to check out the library of modules here. https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/tree/master/client/lib https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/tree/master/client/...
- anon6_ 11y ago
  The whole project is GPLv2. https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/blob/master/LICENSE.md https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/blob/master/LICENSE... I don't have anything against GPL. It just closes a lot of doors for no real reason.
vineet 11y ago
Wasn't Wordpress.com essentially a multi-user edition of Wordpress the open source project? I am curious if Calypso means fewer releases of the Wordpress project? I noticed that some of the docs require a login, for ex: https://wpcalypso.wordpress.com/devdocs/design https://wpcalypso.wordpress.com/devdocs/design Anyone know if this is a bug, or part of the new approach?
- Viper007Bond 11y ago
  WordPress.com still is a single WordPress install and all of the millions of websites are still generated and powered by PHP and MySQL. The difference is that rather than using the admin interface that ships with WordPress, we're encouraging usage of this new interface. It still talks to WordPress via a PHP-powered REST API. In short, it's a new _interface_ for WordPress, not a replacement for WordPress itself. > https://wpcalypso.wordpress.com/devdocs/design https://wpcalypso.wordpress.com/devdocs/design Anyone know if this is a bug, or part of the new approach? Bug. That's one of our internal staging sites and the devdocs are stripped when pushed out to the production URL. I've opened an issue for you: https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/issues/577 https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/issues/577 EDIT: Not private! Just requires a login from any WordPress.com account. There's discussion going on on that ticket to move it somewhere that doesn't require a login but it might not be possible.
  - vineet 11y ago
    If it is a new interface for WordPress, then why does it need Node? Thanks for filing the issue. I will reply there.
    - Viper007Bond 11y ago
      As it's REST API powered, it doesn't. It could have been anything we wanted it to be. We just went with React & co. because we determined it'd be the best solution.
      - vineet 11y ago
debacle 11y ago
This is a huge deal. WordPress is probably the largest project in a plurality of projects continually dragging PHP on the ubiquity parade. If they manage to re-write the front-end as well it could be big. That said, the plugin ecosystem is pretty massive. I wonder how they plan on handling that. Hosting, too. This is going to be pretty interesting for Automattic, PHP, and Node.
mulander 11y ago
Today we're announcing something brand new, a new approach to WordPress, and open sourcing the code behind it. Written purely in JavaScript, leveraging libraries like Node and React. That's their lesson from WordPress?
mmaunder 11y ago
So Automattic, maker of the largest open source PHP CMS in the world has thrown out PHP in favor of node.js for their own site. And the announcement has nothing about where this leaves wordpress.org, the open source PHP CMS that powers 25% of the web. If they're leading by example, we should ditch WordPress.org and PHP in favor of node.js web apps and frameworks too, since it's the way of the future? I happen to wholeheartedly agree. It's just that the developers of the 40,000 plugins who have bet their farms on PHP WordPress might at least want a clearer indication of what exactly is happening here. The only thing I could find about where this leaves wordpress.org is buried in this wired article: http://www.wired.com/2015/11/wordpress-com-gets-a-new-face-and-joins-the-javascript-age/ http://www.wired.com/2015/11/wordpress-com-gets-a-new-face-a... "For the backend code, the team used the popular server-side JavaScript platform Node.js. For users who host their own version of WordPress, Automattic will host the Node.js portion of the code on their own server, with which the Jetpack plugin will communicate, freeing up web hosts from having to support Node.js."
- firasd 11y ago
  I think the way forward would be for WordPress hosting to come with a version of node.js with standard packages which plugins can use, in combination with the new REST API. So even if we would move past PHP we wouldn't move past WordPress, its database, and the basic ways it stores and describes information. No need to reinvent that wheel if it works well for your site or product.
- chipotle_coyote 11y ago
  I think this is a bit of an overstatement. Calypso is a rewritten "dashboard" view and administration panel -- it's a client-side single page web app in React, with "a thin layer of Node.js on the server to build the initial web page," as they put it. This is communicating to the actual WordPress blog/CMS engine over a REST API, that engine is still in PHP, and I suspect it's going to remain PHP for the foreseeable future.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >So Automattic, maker of the largest open source PHP CMS in the world has thrown out PHP in favor of node.js for their own site. No, they kept PHP for the backend, and created a new front-end with node and JS. And that's just for the admin pages. >If they're leading by example, we should ditch WordPress.org and PHP in favor of node.js web apps and frameworks too, since it's the way of the future? Perhaps. Do you expect Automattic to tell you what your stack should be? Besides, if node/Js is the "way of the future" then there's no need to ditch "wordPress.org" since it has already embraced that future.
feketegy 11y ago
Wodpress.org and PHP won't go away anytime soon, because of the whole community and plugins. Wordpress' popularity comes from the plugins, and the WP devs. won't expect plugin authors to rewrite everything into node.js, that just won't happen anytime soon. Although it would be interesting to see how this will affect the client side code of WordPress. React can be interfaced with any back-end.
- csixty4 11y ago
  > won't expect plugin authors to rewrite everything into node.js, that just won't happen anytime soon. This plugin author says "bring it on" :)
rads 11y ago
As a developer at Automattic, the most interesting thing about this to me is that our whole workflow is now public. There are lots of companies that release their code, but it's rare that they also make their development process transparent.
andhofmt 11y ago
As far as I'm concerned rails would provide a better ecosystem for Wordpress.org. Not only is it still used commercially much more so than php in new ventures, but it forces adherence to good architecture which is key for something designed to be extendable like Wordpress. Additionally performance optimization in rails is much easier than php.
- scribu 11y ago
  > performance optimization in rails is much easier than php. [citation needed]
- Implicated 11y ago
  > Not only is it still used commercially much more so than php in new ventures [citation needed]
- spdionis 11y ago
  > because ruby is better than php [citation needed]
sdnguyen90 11y ago
Question unrelated to the actual story - is anyone running a WordPress.com blog as just an API? I've had a few friends ask me to work on their WordPress blogs but I turn them down unless they're willing to migrate to something like Squarespace or Ghost. Most of the time they won't switch because they're used to the WordPress admin. Being able to just fetch a JSON API would actually make me think about working with WordPress.
- sondr3 11y ago
  You have both https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/api/ https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/api/ and https://github.com/WP-API/WP-API https://github.com/WP-API/WP-API that can be used for something like that.
  - sdnguyen90 11y ago
    Thanks for the links, though I was looking more for people's experiences implementing them with a separate frontend.
  - Viper007Bond 11y ago
    That second link soon won't be needed. WordPress 4.4 will include the foundations for the REST API directly in core and 4.5 should include the actual endpoints. https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/09/21/wp-rest-api-merge-proposal/ https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/09/21/wp-rest-api-merge...
    - lucaspiller 11y ago
      I wonder how long until someone writes something not-PHP based that implements this...
- coreymaass 11y ago
  This isn't quite what you mean, I don't think, but I use WordPress as the backend for SaaS apps. So one of my sites, timerdoro.com, is a single-page app, using WordPress as a backend/framework only.
Twirrim 11y ago
> Code reviews were new for many developers — traditionally at Automattic, we have had no systematic peer code review system outside of the VIP team’s daily code review of client sites. Wait... seriously? You had no systemic code review until now? It's not exactly clear what you did by way of code review before, but that sounds suspiciously close to "almost nothing"
- ofutur 11y ago
  Agreed. Quite shocked by that statement and their development process.
lloydde 11y ago
Matt has always been ambitious: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10618666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10618666
lloydde 11y ago
> We still have a ton to figure out around plugins, extensibility, contributions, Windows and Linux releases, API speed, localization, and harmonizing the WordPress.com API and WP-API so it can work with core WordPress. Thousands more PHP developers will need to become fluent with JavaScript to recreate their admin interfaces in this fashion. I'm also really excited to revisit and redesign many more screens now that we have this first version out the door. http://ma.tt/2015/11/dance-to-calypso/ http://ma.tt/2015/11/dance-to-calypso/
SFjulie1 11y ago
It is totally misleading. At one moment you even dream people understand what was wrong with PHP, then you see node.js.
gmays 11y ago
Isn't one of the best aspects of WordPress the powerful plugin ecosystem that adds functionality, much of which is in the admin UI? Or am I missing something?

260 points by lloydde 11y ago

armandososa 11y ago

Matt's post about the same topic: http://ma.tt/2015/11/dance-to-calypso/ http://ma.tt/2015/11/dance-to-calypso/

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

rralian 11y ago

I'm not sure why the title is referring to Calypso as "experimental." It's the production codebase.

dang 11y ago
Given that the submitted title ("Experimental WordPress Calypso Written Purely in JavaScript") broke the HN guidelines, we just reverted it to the article title. Submitters: the HN guidelines ask you to use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait. If you want to say what you think is important about a story, don't do so by rewriting the title—editorializing is against the rules here. Instead, add a comment to the thread, on a level playing field with other commenters.
lloydde 11y ago
Sorry, my mistake. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg on his own site describes it more as the project and the "experiment" behind it. My understanding is this can be used as an interface to all WordPress blogs. My take is that although this is acting through WordPress.com as an API intermediary, it is only steps away from peeling out the whole PHP layer for these interfaces. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg described it as: > At the beginning of last year, we decided to start experimenting and see. > Today we’re announcing something brand new, a new approach to WordPress, and open sourcing the code behind it. The project, codenamed Calypso, is the culmination of more than 20 months of work by dozens of the most talented engineers and designers I’ve had the pleasure of working with (127 contributors with over 26,000 commits!). https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso
- rralian 11y ago
  No worries. I just wanted to make it clear this is not a toe in the water. :-) > My understanding is this can be used as an interface to all WordPress blogs. Yes, that's correct. It works for WordPress.com blogs of course. But self-hosted blogs can also make use of Calypso by installing our Jetpack plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/) which adds some API endpoints that allow Calypso to communicate with the self-hosted site. > it is only steps away from peeling out the whole PHP layer for these interfaces I don't think I would go that far exactly. The php codebase is still there, and users can still use "wp-admin" if they prefer. And the API is also powered by PHP. But now that Calypso only communicates with a site through the API it allows us to separate the view logic and focus on making those endpoints as efficient as possible. I think it's possible the API could be written in a language other than PHP. But that hasn't happened yet and would be a significant task. I should probably mention I am one of the authors, if that wasn't obvious. :-)
  - rralian 11y ago
    Oh yeah, there's also the whole "every page a reader sees" on the front-end of the site.
  - lloydde 11y ago
    > We still have a ton to figure out around plugins, extensibility, contributions, Windows and Linux releases, API speed, localization, and harmonizing the WordPress.com API and WP-API so it can work with core WordPress. Thousands more PHP developers will need to become fluent with JavaScript to recreate their admin interfaces in this fashion. I'm also really excited to revisit and redesign many more screens now that we have this first version out the door. http://ma.tt/2015/11/dance-to-calypso/ http://ma.tt/2015/11/dance-to-calypso/

kingkool68 11y ago

Meh.

pan69 11y ago

OK. So basically this is an Adobe Air-esque app that is a user interface to WordPress which at the moment only works on Mac. I'm sorry but I don't really understand what the value proposition here is, maybe I missed it in the article? WordPress already has a pretty good user interface, which was build in HTML/CSS/Javascript. When people complain about WordPress being an outdated architecture it's not the UI they're referring to..

jeffgolenski 11y ago
The desktop app is currently only for Mac, but we're working on other platforms. WordPress.com, which is a very similar experience, is obviously web based and can be used in any browser on any platform. This entire upgrade utilizes the new WordPress rest API and the new WordPress.com is open source.
- pan69 11y ago
  Sorry, maybe my previous comment wasn't very clear, let me try again; I don't understand what problem this project solves and whom it solves it for. We can already manage multi-site WordPress installations and usually that's done by site admins, not the average content Joe, so does it really need a super fancy new UI? And what exactly does it mean when you say "WordPress.com is open source"? Maybe I'm out of the loop but the way I understand it is that wordpress.com is a hosted (commercial) service of wordpress.org. My experience with WordPress is not that the UI is a problem at all, neither multi site management, which I think is in the scheme of things quite niche. The problem with WordPress I hear other developers complain about is the out dated PHP system architecture.
  - umurkontaci 11y ago
    It exactly means as you hear actually, WordPress.com, as we all know, was written in React, is now open-source. In WordPress.com, "average content Joe", can manage multiple sites, including self-hosted WordPress.org sites (through JetPack plugin). Disclosure: I'm one of the authors.

opendomain 11y ago

This is just "Wordpress.Com" in javascript, not wordpress the blogging software. You have to interface with Wordpress.Com to build your own site. The code references Node.JS for the server side, but only as a proxy.

fractalsea 11y ago
From https://developer.wordpress.com/calypso/ https://developer.wordpress.com/calypso/ "If you run your own self-hosted WordPress site, you can install the Jetpack plugin to use the Calypso-based editing and management tools."

nanoojaboo 11y ago

Reading the article once I had no idea if it was a total replacement for the php codebase, or intended to work along side it.

avolcano 11y ago

This must be one of the largest open-sourced React codebases yet, very cool.

msdi 11y ago

It's a web app too. Wordpress.com has been steadily introducing features (through Jetpack) that allow you to manage your installed Wordpress instances - this brings the two together. So you can login to wordpress.com either via the web, apps, Air etc to manage/publish to any types of Wordpress installs. It means that you don't have to use the old wp-admin CMS and can use what they've now built and released.

drapper 11y ago

Never mind the product, look at that list of React components (https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/tree/master/client/components https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/tree/master/client/...)! Any chance this will become a separate framework?

rralian 11y ago
I don't know if I would call it a framework per se, but absolutely we want to break off individual pieces that can be separately re-used and make them available for everyone. In the meantime if you see something in particular that you're itching for, open a new issue and let us know. You may also want to check out the library of modules here. https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/tree/master/client/lib https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/tree/master/client/...
anon6_ 11y ago
The whole project is GPLv2. https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/blob/master/LICENSE.md https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/blob/master/LICENSE... I don't have anything against GPL. It just closes a lot of doors for no real reason.

vineet 11y ago

Wasn't Wordpress.com essentially a multi-user edition of Wordpress the open source project? I am curious if Calypso means fewer releases of the Wordpress project? I noticed that some of the docs require a login, for ex: https://wpcalypso.wordpress.com/devdocs/design https://wpcalypso.wordpress.com/devdocs/design Anyone know if this is a bug, or part of the new approach?

Viper007Bond 11y ago
WordPress.com still is a single WordPress install and all of the millions of websites are still generated and powered by PHP and MySQL. The difference is that rather than using the admin interface that ships with WordPress, we're encouraging usage of this new interface. It still talks to WordPress via a PHP-powered REST API. In short, it's a new _interface_ for WordPress, not a replacement for WordPress itself. > https://wpcalypso.wordpress.com/devdocs/design https://wpcalypso.wordpress.com/devdocs/design Anyone know if this is a bug, or part of the new approach? Bug. That's one of our internal staging sites and the devdocs are stripped when pushed out to the production URL. I've opened an issue for you: https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/issues/577 https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/issues/577 EDIT: Not private! Just requires a login from any WordPress.com account. There's discussion going on on that ticket to move it somewhere that doesn't require a login but it might not be possible.
- vineet 11y ago
  If it is a new interface for WordPress, then why does it need Node? Thanks for filing the issue. I will reply there.
  - Viper007Bond 11y ago
    As it's REST API powered, it doesn't. It could have been anything we wanted it to be. We just went with React & co. because we determined it'd be the best solution.
    - vineet 11y ago

debacle 11y ago

This is a huge deal. WordPress is probably the largest project in a plurality of projects continually dragging PHP on the ubiquity parade. If they manage to re-write the front-end as well it could be big. That said, the plugin ecosystem is pretty massive. I wonder how they plan on handling that. Hosting, too. This is going to be pretty interesting for Automattic, PHP, and Node.

mulander 11y ago

Today we're announcing something brand new, a new approach to WordPress, and open sourcing the code behind it. Written purely in JavaScript, leveraging libraries like Node and React. That's their lesson from WordPress?

mmaunder 11y ago

So Automattic, maker of the largest open source PHP CMS in the world has thrown out PHP in favor of node.js for their own site. And the announcement has nothing about where this leaves wordpress.org, the open source PHP CMS that powers 25% of the web. If they're leading by example, we should ditch WordPress.org and PHP in favor of node.js web apps and frameworks too, since it's the way of the future? I happen to wholeheartedly agree. It's just that the developers of the 40,000 plugins who have bet their farms on PHP WordPress might at least want a clearer indication of what exactly is happening here. The only thing I could find about where this leaves wordpress.org is buried in this wired article: http://www.wired.com/2015/11/wordpress-com-gets-a-new-face-and-joins-the-javascript-age/ http://www.wired.com/2015/11/wordpress-com-gets-a-new-face-a... "For the backend code, the team used the popular server-side JavaScript platform Node.js. For users who host their own version of WordPress, Automattic will host the Node.js portion of the code on their own server, with which the Jetpack plugin will communicate, freeing up web hosts from having to support Node.js."

firasd 11y ago
I think the way forward would be for WordPress hosting to come with a version of node.js with standard packages which plugins can use, in combination with the new REST API. So even if we would move past PHP we wouldn't move past WordPress, its database, and the basic ways it stores and describes information. No need to reinvent that wheel if it works well for your site or product.
chipotle_coyote 11y ago
I think this is a bit of an overstatement. Calypso is a rewritten "dashboard" view and administration panel -- it's a client-side single page web app in React, with "a thin layer of Node.js on the server to build the initial web page," as they put it. This is communicating to the actual WordPress blog/CMS engine over a REST API, that engine is still in PHP, and I suspect it's going to remain PHP for the foreseeable future.
coldtea 11y ago
>So Automattic, maker of the largest open source PHP CMS in the world has thrown out PHP in favor of node.js for their own site. No, they kept PHP for the backend, and created a new front-end with node and JS. And that's just for the admin pages. >If they're leading by example, we should ditch WordPress.org and PHP in favor of node.js web apps and frameworks too, since it's the way of the future? Perhaps. Do you expect Automattic to tell you what your stack should be? Besides, if node/Js is the "way of the future" then there's no need to ditch "wordPress.org" since it has already embraced that future.

feketegy 11y ago

Wodpress.org and PHP won't go away anytime soon, because of the whole community and plugins. Wordpress' popularity comes from the plugins, and the WP devs. won't expect plugin authors to rewrite everything into node.js, that just won't happen anytime soon. Although it would be interesting to see how this will affect the client side code of WordPress. React can be interfaced with any back-end.

csixty4 11y ago
> won't expect plugin authors to rewrite everything into node.js, that just won't happen anytime soon. This plugin author says "bring it on" :)

rads 11y ago

As a developer at Automattic, the most interesting thing about this to me is that our whole workflow is now public. There are lots of companies that release their code, but it's rare that they also make their development process transparent.

andhofmt 11y ago

As far as I'm concerned rails would provide a better ecosystem for Wordpress.org. Not only is it still used commercially much more so than php in new ventures, but it forces adherence to good architecture which is key for something designed to be extendable like Wordpress. Additionally performance optimization in rails is much easier than php.

scribu 11y ago
> performance optimization in rails is much easier than php. [citation needed]
Implicated 11y ago
> Not only is it still used commercially much more so than php in new ventures [citation needed]
spdionis 11y ago
> because ruby is better than php [citation needed]

sdnguyen90 11y ago

Question unrelated to the actual story - is anyone running a WordPress.com blog as just an API? I've had a few friends ask me to work on their WordPress blogs but I turn them down unless they're willing to migrate to something like Squarespace or Ghost. Most of the time they won't switch because they're used to the WordPress admin. Being able to just fetch a JSON API would actually make me think about working with WordPress.

sondr3 11y ago
You have both https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/api/ https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/api/ and https://github.com/WP-API/WP-API https://github.com/WP-API/WP-API that can be used for something like that.
- sdnguyen90 11y ago
  Thanks for the links, though I was looking more for people's experiences implementing them with a separate frontend.
- Viper007Bond 11y ago
  That second link soon won't be needed. WordPress 4.4 will include the foundations for the REST API directly in core and 4.5 should include the actual endpoints. https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/09/21/wp-rest-api-merge-proposal/ https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/09/21/wp-rest-api-merge...
  - lucaspiller 11y ago
    I wonder how long until someone writes something not-PHP based that implements this...
coreymaass 11y ago
This isn't quite what you mean, I don't think, but I use WordPress as the backend for SaaS apps. So one of my sites, timerdoro.com, is a single-page app, using WordPress as a backend/framework only.

Twirrim 11y ago

> Code reviews were new for many developers — traditionally at Automattic, we have had no systematic peer code review system outside of the VIP team’s daily code review of client sites. Wait... seriously? You had no systemic code review until now? It's not exactly clear what you did by way of code review before, but that sounds suspiciously close to "almost nothing"

ofutur 11y ago
Agreed. Quite shocked by that statement and their development process.

lloydde 11y ago

Matt has always been ambitious: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10618666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10618666

lloydde 11y ago

> We still have a ton to figure out around plugins, extensibility, contributions, Windows and Linux releases, API speed, localization, and harmonizing the WordPress.com API and WP-API so it can work with core WordPress. Thousands more PHP developers will need to become fluent with JavaScript to recreate their admin interfaces in this fashion. I'm also really excited to revisit and redesign many more screens now that we have this first version out the door. http://ma.tt/2015/11/dance-to-calypso/ http://ma.tt/2015/11/dance-to-calypso/

SFjulie1 11y ago

It is totally misleading. At one moment you even dream people understand what was wrong with PHP, then you see node.js.

gmays 11y ago

Isn't one of the best aspects of WordPress the powerful plugin ecosystem that adds functionality, much of which is in the admin UI? Or am I missing something?