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I've seen people say WordPress is the devil, but honestly, I have found if you want a simple blog, it works extremely well. I selfhost two WordPress instances w

by kop316 6y ago

I've seen people say WordPress is the devil, but honestly, I have found if you want a simple blog, it works extremely well. I selfhost two WordPress instances with a LAMP stack on Debian (the hardware is literally in my basement), and the maintaince I do is log in maybe once a week to make sure that Debian/WordPress auto updated. Most of the time I don't even do that because Debian/WordPress email me to tell me it's updated. I think one of WordPress' biggest issue is that I have not really found a good how to to really set it up (they advertise their "5 minute deploy", but it leaves a lot of things lacking). If I set it up, I have a series of articles I used to set it up. The other issue I've anecdotally seen is when someone installs a bunch of plug ins then gets into a dependency hell when trying to update.

seriocomic 6y ago
I used "devil" in the context of the axiom "better the Devil you know..." - so while I understand and relate to much of the anti-WordPress commentary, I wouldn't call it "the Devil". Just to clarify!
- kop316 6y ago
  Ahh, fair enough! I have just seen a lot of hate to it, and I personally think some of that is unfair to WP.
52-6F-62 6y ago
WordPress is great for simple blogs. The people (probably like me) who would call WP the devil is people who have had to maintain 15 year old intertwined WP instances riddled with outdated portions of the platform, insecure hand-coded modifications, terribly functioning custom plugins, horrible data hygiene for exporting and re-appropriating content, and terrible, clunky infrastructure setups. WordPress makes all of those easier, and encourages them when it’s anything more than a simple blog or product page or something. It’s easy for new features to be requested and sold and horrible to sell fixing any of the above problems. It goes on deaf ears once people get used to the web products just being there. And once clients get used to the blog interface, you dare not recommend any change no matter how good for the business. I’ve seen smart, talented people just give up in the face of that kind of monstrosity, shelve all their plans for improvement and just buy into the duct-tape patch jobs of yore and developing one-off plugins for every request because it’s fast and needed to be done yesterday because something else has been requested or broken. After my rambling let me reiterate that Wordpress is great for its intended application. But it is horrible for the extrapolated purpose many companies and teams have bent, twisted, and surgically manipulated it to be used. It’s not Wordpress’s fault exactly. It’s those who’ve recommended wp as a tool to solve problems it wasn’t meant for, and industry that has built up around that to make it appear as if it’s a viable solution.
- mauflows 6y ago
  The one time I was brought on to a WordPress project, it was deployed via ftp and there was an ominous text file (not named Readme) in the root that said something like "we had to use a lot of symlinks to get things to work. Be careful deploying"
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    That sounds hauntingly familiar. How bad is your PTSD? haha
- sandymcmurray 6y ago
  This. Client wants a "simple" site, but insists on custom themes and plugins that break or are unsupported or abandoned by the developer.
efficax 6y ago
Wordpress has had a history of serious security vulnerabilities that gave it a bad rap for folks that have been following the industry for a long time. I think automattic has done a great job overall in improving Wordpress and you don't hear about mass defacements or easy hacks for the standard wordpress install anymore. The plugin ecosystem however opens you up once again: here the devil is in the details. Every plugin you install might be the giant blinking red light that says: hack me, steal my data, etc. On balance though wordpress is pretty good these days.
- trey-jones 6y ago
  Part of the reason for highly visible security vulnerabilities in Wordpress is just a result of the massive user base. Heavily used platforms are naturally more heavily targeted by malicious users since they are easier to find, and exploits are more readily available. In truth, most software at any given time probably has serious security vulnerabilities that just aren't as obviously exploitable, and I wouldn't say that the volume of published exploits related to Wordpress is indicative of a poorly managed or written piece of software.

by kop316 6y ago

seriocomic 6y ago

I used "devil" in the context of the axiom "better the Devil you know..." - so while I understand and relate to much of the anti-WordPress commentary, I wouldn't call it "the Devil". Just to clarify!

kop316 6y ago
Ahh, fair enough! I have just seen a lot of hate to it, and I personally think some of that is unfair to WP.

52-6F-62 6y ago

WordPress is great for simple blogs. The people (probably like me) who would call WP the devil is people who have had to maintain 15 year old intertwined WP instances riddled with outdated portions of the platform, insecure hand-coded modifications, terribly functioning custom plugins, horrible data hygiene for exporting and re-appropriating content, and terrible, clunky infrastructure setups. WordPress makes all of those easier, and encourages them when it’s anything more than a simple blog or product page or something. It’s easy for new features to be requested and sold and horrible to sell fixing any of the above problems. It goes on deaf ears once people get used to the web products just being there. And once clients get used to the blog interface, you dare not recommend any change no matter how good for the business. I’ve seen smart, talented people just give up in the face of that kind of monstrosity, shelve all their plans for improvement and just buy into the duct-tape patch jobs of yore and developing one-off plugins for every request because it’s fast and needed to be done yesterday because something else has been requested or broken. After my rambling let me reiterate that Wordpress is great for its intended application. But it is horrible for the extrapolated purpose many companies and teams have bent, twisted, and surgically manipulated it to be used. It’s not Wordpress’s fault exactly. It’s those who’ve recommended wp as a tool to solve problems it wasn’t meant for, and industry that has built up around that to make it appear as if it’s a viable solution.

mauflows 6y ago
The one time I was brought on to a WordPress project, it was deployed via ftp and there was an ominous text file (not named Readme) in the root that said something like "we had to use a lot of symlinks to get things to work. Be careful deploying"
- 52-6F-62 6y ago
  That sounds hauntingly familiar. How bad is your PTSD? haha
sandymcmurray 6y ago
This. Client wants a "simple" site, but insists on custom themes and plugins that break or are unsupported or abandoned by the developer.

efficax 6y ago

Wordpress has had a history of serious security vulnerabilities that gave it a bad rap for folks that have been following the industry for a long time. I think automattic has done a great job overall in improving Wordpress and you don't hear about mass defacements or easy hacks for the standard wordpress install anymore. The plugin ecosystem however opens you up once again: here the devil is in the details. Every plugin you install might be the giant blinking red light that says: hack me, steal my data, etc. On balance though wordpress is pretty good these days.

trey-jones 6y ago
Part of the reason for highly visible security vulnerabilities in Wordpress is just a result of the massive user base. Heavily used platforms are naturally more heavily targeted by malicious users since they are easier to find, and exploits are more readily available. In truth, most software at any given time probably has serious security vulnerabilities that just aren't as obviously exploitable, and I wouldn't say that the volume of published exploits related to Wordpress is indicative of a poorly managed or written piece of software.