6 ms·

In this age where the trend is JAM stack, it is refreshing to see that something battle-tested like WordPress was chosen. There's a reason WP has withstood the

In this age where the trend is JAM stack, it is refreshing to see that something battle-tested like WordPress was chosen. There's a reason WP has withstood the test of time. (WordPress developers being a dime a dozen also help make the case)

nkozyra 6y ago
That reason might be familiarity. Or inertia. Or breadth of available resources to work with it, as you mentioned. Or all of the above. And that might be a good enough reason, but to imply it's the best technical option warrants some skepticism.
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- lemonberry 6y ago
  I'm not asking this to be snarky, but by what metric would you decide something was the best technical option?
  - nkozyra 6y ago
    There's no single metric, but in particular I believe that inherent inefficiency with WordPress design will incur more cost to scale, as an example. Not to mention things little security issues. I don't have an agenda against WordPress and very often when people ask me what they should use for simple projects I say "just use WordPress." My rule of thumb is that will probably be alright for a simple, small project, but will have to grow up to something else to scale reasonably.
    - aheckler 6y ago
      > inherent inefficiency with WordPress design will incur more cost to scale Check out Cloudflare's Automatic Platform Optimization tool from last year [0]. It uses Workers to cache static and dynamic content from WordPress on the edge. Just $5/month. IMHO, that would "scale reasonably" for many use cases. [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/automatic-platform-optimizations-starting-with-wordpress/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/automatic-platform-optimizations...
      - nkozyra 6y ago
        CDN literally everything is - to me - a last resort you can use when your underlying application cannot handle any direct traffic. It's an expensive compromise that you shouldn't need unless you're in Alexa top 100 territory.
        aheckler 6y ago
        That's a perfectly fair attitude. I was just trying to show that it's not very expensive to scale WordPress. :)
    - satya71 6y ago
      Why does it have to scale? Doesn’t a CDN solve most scaling issues for a content site.
    - chmod775 6y ago
      > but in particular I believe that inherent inefficiency with WordPress design will incur more cost to scale WordPress essentially generates static pages and is trivially set-up to run behind a CDN like Cloudflare. You can easily have WordPress sites in the Alexa top 50k that run on a $5 VPS - behind Cloudflare. > My rule of thumb is that will probably be alright for a simple, small project, Right. Simple, small projects. Like whitehouse.gov. As long as you use Wordpress for what it was designed for, it really doesn't matter what scale you have.
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teh_klev 6y ago
JAM stack ? The first letter I guess is Javascript?
- blhack 6y ago
  “JavaScript, APIs, Markup”
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    For a second I thought you're being sarcastic until I looked it up.
    - Falkon1313 6y ago
      Next thing we know, the kids these days will invent some mindblowing new concept like "HappyText Makestuff Language" aka HTML that actually allows you to link to other documents!
benatkin 6y ago
It's Jamstack and it's more than just a trend.
perardi 6y ago
Are we at the point that creating and editing a page in a JAM stack site is as easy as WordPress for non-technical users? Not a snarky or leading question, I honestly don’t know. I use Hugo for my own internal design things, because I want partials and such, but I have no idea where the ecosystem is at for the “we need a poli-sci intern to copyedit this” use case.
- mr_toad 6y ago
  Does a user need to create a page entire? Used be that we had writers, editors, type setters, printers and book-binders, and I think the output was more professional. I think there’s still a case for the non-technical users just writing the words, and keeping away from the presentation and delivery.
- marc_io 6y ago
  There are already solutions for this, like Stackbit and Publii.
- clintonb 6y ago
  Maybe, for basic use cases. I use Forestry as a CMS for my Jekyll site. I only have two templates: page and blog post.
shiftpgdn 6y ago
JAM stack (this term is trademarked by Netlify, FYI) is such an awful trend for anyone but developers. The web runs on WordPress because it's SO easy for anyone to stand up a quality, functional website. I drop in on a local WordPress event a few times a year and many of the people there are 60+ and very much non technical but have put together great sites that benefit humanity.
- onion2k 6y ago
  it's SO easy for anyone to stand up a quality, functional website And its also really easy for it to be left without updates or security patches, with an insecure admin account password, and with a set of plugins that open up more security problems. It might be a bit harder to get up and running with a static site generator but the fact that it's essentially unhackable (through the site itself; the host server has the same issues as any website) is a massive advantage.
  - kirstenbirgit 6y ago
    WordPress has automatic updates, and you actually have to enter a hard to guess password when creating an account. The plugin issue is not specific to WordPress.
    - onion2k 6y ago
      The plugin issue is not specific to WordPress. The fact that other platforms and applications are insecure isn't relevant; we're comparing static sites to WordPress. However, to answer the point, static sites are significantly more secure than every single dynamic platform that supports a plugin architecture because plugins can be, and often are, written without security in mind. Unless you really need a dynamic website you should be deploying static assets to the enduser. Practically every business website would be better off being delivered as a static site, even if the admin still use WordPress to edit the content.
  - XCSme 6y ago
    I agree that WordPress security is a huge issue, the biggest potential problem is that not when a random website goes down but when someone finds a mass-exploit and then gets access to millions of websites. > It might be a bit harder to get up and running with a static site generator but the fact that it's essentially unhackable You could also use WordPress to generate a static site, just add a caching level on top.
hardwaresofton 6y ago
I think if WP ever finds a way to do two things: - continuously serialize WP to static files - Make it easier to work with Wordpress as a CRM (No Code or at the very least don't force developers to touch PHP) JAM stack would near instantly cease to make any business sense (though developers would still love using it of course). A lot of the issues with Wordpress are sort of long-tail -- combinations of plugins exposing leaks in the abstractions, etc. BTW, if anyone is working on solving this, I'd love to know about it.
- ozorOzora 6y ago
  Or you can just roll with JAMstack as it's literally about what you're asking for.
  - hardwaresofton 6y ago
    The problem I'm saying exists with JAM stack is that it's great for developers but bad for non-technical people -- wordpress is the opposite, and if I could get JAM stack properties out of Wordpress, I wouldn't use JAM stack for any projects which involved having non-technical people modify the site (which is a lot of them).
    - illuminea 6y ago
      You could check out Strattic which gives users the best of both worlds - edit your site as usual in WordPress, and click a button to deploy a static, Jamstack version of the site. All the power of WordPress with none of the headache. https://www.strattic.com https://www.strattic.com
- marc_io 6y ago
  > continuously serialize WP to static files Any cache plugin for WordPress does this already, but if you mean something that does this in order to host elsewhere (like in Netlify), WP2Static is a solution.
  - 6y ago

nkozyra 6y ago

That reason might be familiarity. Or inertia. Or breadth of available resources to work with it, as you mentioned. Or all of the above. And that might be a good enough reason, but to imply it's the best technical option warrants some skepticism.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lemonberry 6y ago
I'm not asking this to be snarky, but by what metric would you decide something was the best technical option?
- nkozyra 6y ago
  There's no single metric, but in particular I believe that inherent inefficiency with WordPress design will incur more cost to scale, as an example. Not to mention things little security issues. I don't have an agenda against WordPress and very often when people ask me what they should use for simple projects I say "just use WordPress." My rule of thumb is that will probably be alright for a simple, small project, but will have to grow up to something else to scale reasonably.
  - aheckler 6y ago
    > inherent inefficiency with WordPress design will incur more cost to scale Check out Cloudflare's Automatic Platform Optimization tool from last year [0]. It uses Workers to cache static and dynamic content from WordPress on the edge. Just $5/month. IMHO, that would "scale reasonably" for many use cases. [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/automatic-platform-optimizations-starting-with-wordpress/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/automatic-platform-optimizations...
    - nkozyra 6y ago
      CDN literally everything is - to me - a last resort you can use when your underlying application cannot handle any direct traffic. It's an expensive compromise that you shouldn't need unless you're in Alexa top 100 territory.
      - aheckler 6y ago
        That's a perfectly fair attitude. I was just trying to show that it's not very expensive to scale WordPress. :)
  - satya71 6y ago
    Why does it have to scale? Doesn’t a CDN solve most scaling issues for a content site.
  - chmod775 6y ago
    > but in particular I believe that inherent inefficiency with WordPress design will incur more cost to scale WordPress essentially generates static pages and is trivially set-up to run behind a CDN like Cloudflare. You can easily have WordPress sites in the Alexa top 50k that run on a $5 VPS - behind Cloudflare. > My rule of thumb is that will probably be alright for a simple, small project, Right. Simple, small projects. Like whitehouse.gov. As long as you use Wordpress for what it was designed for, it really doesn't matter what scale you have.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

teh_klev 6y ago

JAM stack ? The first letter I guess is Javascript?

blhack 6y ago
“JavaScript, APIs, Markup”
- fermienrico 6y ago
  For a second I thought you're being sarcastic until I looked it up.
  - Falkon1313 6y ago
    Next thing we know, the kids these days will invent some mindblowing new concept like "HappyText Makestuff Language" aka HTML that actually allows you to link to other documents!

benatkin 6y ago

It's Jamstack and it's more than just a trend.

perardi 6y ago

Are we at the point that creating and editing a page in a JAM stack site is as easy as WordPress for non-technical users? Not a snarky or leading question, I honestly don’t know. I use Hugo for my own internal design things, because I want partials and such, but I have no idea where the ecosystem is at for the “we need a poli-sci intern to copyedit this” use case.

mr_toad 6y ago
Does a user need to create a page entire? Used be that we had writers, editors, type setters, printers and book-binders, and I think the output was more professional. I think there’s still a case for the non-technical users just writing the words, and keeping away from the presentation and delivery.
marc_io 6y ago
There are already solutions for this, like Stackbit and Publii.
clintonb 6y ago
Maybe, for basic use cases. I use Forestry as a CMS for my Jekyll site. I only have two templates: page and blog post.

shiftpgdn 6y ago

JAM stack (this term is trademarked by Netlify, FYI) is such an awful trend for anyone but developers. The web runs on WordPress because it's SO easy for anyone to stand up a quality, functional website. I drop in on a local WordPress event a few times a year and many of the people there are 60+ and very much non technical but have put together great sites that benefit humanity.

onion2k 6y ago
it's SO easy for anyone to stand up a quality, functional website And its also really easy for it to be left without updates or security patches, with an insecure admin account password, and with a set of plugins that open up more security problems. It might be a bit harder to get up and running with a static site generator but the fact that it's essentially unhackable (through the site itself; the host server has the same issues as any website) is a massive advantage.
- kirstenbirgit 6y ago
  WordPress has automatic updates, and you actually have to enter a hard to guess password when creating an account. The plugin issue is not specific to WordPress.
  - onion2k 6y ago
    The plugin issue is not specific to WordPress. The fact that other platforms and applications are insecure isn't relevant; we're comparing static sites to WordPress. However, to answer the point, static sites are significantly more secure than every single dynamic platform that supports a plugin architecture because plugins can be, and often are, written without security in mind. Unless you really need a dynamic website you should be deploying static assets to the enduser. Practically every business website would be better off being delivered as a static site, even if the admin still use WordPress to edit the content.
- XCSme 6y ago
  I agree that WordPress security is a huge issue, the biggest potential problem is that not when a random website goes down but when someone finds a mass-exploit and then gets access to millions of websites. > It might be a bit harder to get up and running with a static site generator but the fact that it's essentially unhackable You could also use WordPress to generate a static site, just add a caching level on top.

hardwaresofton 6y ago

I think if WP ever finds a way to do two things: - continuously serialize WP to static files - Make it easier to work with Wordpress as a CRM (No Code or at the very least don't force developers to touch PHP) JAM stack would near instantly cease to make any business sense (though developers would still love using it of course). A lot of the issues with Wordpress are sort of long-tail -- combinations of plugins exposing leaks in the abstractions, etc. BTW, if anyone is working on solving this, I'd love to know about it.

ozorOzora 6y ago
Or you can just roll with JAMstack as it's literally about what you're asking for.
- hardwaresofton 6y ago
  The problem I'm saying exists with JAM stack is that it's great for developers but bad for non-technical people -- wordpress is the opposite, and if I could get JAM stack properties out of Wordpress, I wouldn't use JAM stack for any projects which involved having non-technical people modify the site (which is a lot of them).
  - illuminea 6y ago
    You could check out Strattic which gives users the best of both worlds - edit your site as usual in WordPress, and click a button to deploy a static, Jamstack version of the site. All the power of WordPress with none of the headache. https://www.strattic.com https://www.strattic.com
marc_io 6y ago
> continuously serialize WP to static files Any cache plugin for WordPress does this already, but if you mean something that does this in order to host elsewhere (like in Netlify), WP2Static is a solution.
- 6y ago