4 ms·

I've been a WP developer for more than 10 years and have had enough. I'm doing what I can to persuade clients that WP isn't the only solution, and that CMS's l

I've been a WP developer for more than 10 years and have had enough. I'm doing what I can to persuade clients that WP isn't the only solution, and that CMS's like Statamic and frameworks like Laravel can be a viable and cost effective solution.

parsley27 6y ago
Are any of those platforms ready yet for everyone to use? I feel like we're getting closer, and devs and most designers probably can leave WP behind, but if I have a friend who wants a site and I don't want to ever touch it for them, I'm not sure I know of a non-WP option that is ready for that. Ghost, maybe?
- whatsmyusername 6y ago
  Hugo, jekyll, webflow, wordpress.com, I'm sure there are others.
  - arkitaip 6y ago
    Good luck getting businesses to manage hugo or jekyll on their $10 hosting.
    - whatsmyusername 6y ago
      The request was for something they could setup and not look at. If it's a throwaway site that's what I use (usually backed by s3/cloudfront). Costs pennies and can be ignored for years without issue.
- joe_momma 6y ago
  Contentful is great for content management
- nevi-me 6y ago
  Ghost needs the developer momentum that WP and other PHP frameworks got. I last used it in 1., and picked it up 2 weeks ago when I found myself needing a headless CMS. I got a sense from the new features since 1. that it's moving towards a membership system which might not be relevant for many websites. In terms of an editor and a way to expose content, is good enough; but like I say with more developers, this could bring more hands to implement stronger plugin systems and improve the core editing options.
- singemonkey 6y ago
  For non-technical people who just want to create content, I'd recommend a hosted service, like Squarespace, Wix, etc. Even wordpress.com if they want something relatively simply and 'bloggy'. I've stopped recommending the self-hosted (wordpress.org) version to non technical people (even if it's a 1 click hosting platform), because there are just too many things that can go wrong, particularly with plugins. As a developer, my experience with Statamic and Laravel has been joyful, compared to WP.
- georgiecasey 6y ago
  > but if I have a friend who wants a site and I don't want to ever touch it for them I did this for a few friends, hosted them on my server, set up Wordpress. Worked for some but most found even Wordpres too complicated. I sent to them to Squarespace and they're happy with that, albeit paying a hefty enough monthly fee after the initial trial period. Not my problem though! washing my hands
arkitaip 6y ago
Great, now they are on some unknown platform where trivial dynamic features are going to be expensive and difficult to implement.
- yurishimo 6y ago
  I think that's why they specifically mentioned Statamic. Other MVC framework backed CMS's would work too. OctoberCMS comes to mind, and I'm sure there are others for Rails/Django. Those would give you a modest plugin ecosystem to get stuff like form submissions, but also give developers an escape hatch for when something more custom is required.
scarecrowbob 6y ago
Yeah, I basically spend most of my working days troubleshooting weird WP issues... gutenberg can't find taxonomies because when the site was developed the devs didn't add the tax to the REST API, etc. I really wanted to like Gutenberg. I learned how to build blocks (and the f- me, they totally changed a ton of stuff about how that works). At this point, I have some pretty deep knowledge about WP and how to make it do all kinds of funky stuff it shouldn't do... but holy hell if I could get the sales folks to start selling about any other CMS I'd do that in a heart beat. But I'd still have 600 or so legacy WP sites to support. I'm grateful to have work, and WP can be a real shit show when you look at that many sites.

parsley27 6y ago

Are any of those platforms ready yet for everyone to use? I feel like we're getting closer, and devs and most designers probably can leave WP behind, but if I have a friend who wants a site and I don't want to ever touch it for them, I'm not sure I know of a non-WP option that is ready for that. Ghost, maybe?

whatsmyusername 6y ago
Hugo, jekyll, webflow, wordpress.com, I'm sure there are others.
- arkitaip 6y ago
  Good luck getting businesses to manage hugo or jekyll on their $10 hosting.
  - whatsmyusername 6y ago
    The request was for something they could setup and not look at. If it's a throwaway site that's what I use (usually backed by s3/cloudfront). Costs pennies and can be ignored for years without issue.
joe_momma 6y ago
Contentful is great for content management
nevi-me 6y ago
Ghost needs the developer momentum that WP and other PHP frameworks got. I last used it in 1., and picked it up 2 weeks ago when I found myself needing a headless CMS. I got a sense from the new features since 1. that it's moving towards a membership system which might not be relevant for many websites. In terms of an editor and a way to expose content, is good enough; but like I say with more developers, this could bring more hands to implement stronger plugin systems and improve the core editing options.
singemonkey 6y ago
For non-technical people who just want to create content, I'd recommend a hosted service, like Squarespace, Wix, etc. Even wordpress.com if they want something relatively simply and 'bloggy'. I've stopped recommending the self-hosted (wordpress.org) version to non technical people (even if it's a 1 click hosting platform), because there are just too many things that can go wrong, particularly with plugins. As a developer, my experience with Statamic and Laravel has been joyful, compared to WP.
georgiecasey 6y ago
> but if I have a friend who wants a site and I don't want to ever touch it for them I did this for a few friends, hosted them on my server, set up Wordpress. Worked for some but most found even Wordpres too complicated. I sent to them to Squarespace and they're happy with that, albeit paying a hefty enough monthly fee after the initial trial period. Not my problem though! washing my hands

arkitaip 6y ago

Great, now they are on some unknown platform where trivial dynamic features are going to be expensive and difficult to implement.

yurishimo 6y ago
I think that's why they specifically mentioned Statamic. Other MVC framework backed CMS's would work too. OctoberCMS comes to mind, and I'm sure there are others for Rails/Django. Those would give you a modest plugin ecosystem to get stuff like form submissions, but also give developers an escape hatch for when something more custom is required.

scarecrowbob 6y ago

Yeah, I basically spend most of my working days troubleshooting weird WP issues... gutenberg can't find taxonomies because when the site was developed the devs didn't add the tax to the REST API, etc. I really wanted to like Gutenberg. I learned how to build blocks (and the f- me, they totally changed a ton of stuff about how that works). At this point, I have some pretty deep knowledge about WP and how to make it do all kinds of funky stuff it shouldn't do... but holy hell if I could get the sales folks to start selling about any other CMS I'd do that in a heart beat. But I'd still have 600 or so legacy WP sites to support. I'm grateful to have work, and WP can be a real shit show when you look at that many sites.