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Yes, a few months ago, it was ridiculously easy. It literally took me 20 minutes to customize how the side bar was working and embed some new dynamic content. I

Yes, a few months ago, it was ridiculously easy. It literally took me 20 minutes to customize how the side bar was working and embed some new dynamic content. I even inherited off a parent theme so any updates to the theme wouldn't over-ride my changes. I've never even written much PHP in the past. I even added it into the the theme editor so the client could change the text/etc. themselves. Not sure what you did, but you clearly did it wrong if you think it's hard. It just worked.

1123581321 6y ago
That's one problem with Wordpress' default renders; it sends developers down those relatively narrow paths of customizing existing output. It's easy if requirements are flexible enough to allow that, but not the right CMS for truly customized content architecture and presentation.
- kirstenbirgit 6y ago
  > truly customized content architecture and presentation Can you give an example of something like that which is not possible with WordPress?
  - 1123581321 6y ago
    Customized presentation is possible by starting with a blank template. Most do not do that, so if they want to customize, they spend time modifying and working around the default views. This has an effect of constraining the look. The difficulty emulating controller-like behavior means that adding multiple pieces of content to a view takes extra work. As for the content architecture, Wordpress cpt are limited in their ability to relate to others and to define flexible custom fields (even with ACF.) It’s possible to hack together something like what a more flexible CMS or application framework can do, but it’s fragile and takes a lot of boilerplate, which, similar to template customization, steers the developer towards a similar architecture to other sites. For these reasons, increased development and maintenance cost make it unlikely that an attempt to develop something truly customized on Wordpress will be successful. That said, many only know Wordpress development so may still get further with it than with a closer fit to their project.

1123581321 6y ago

That's one problem with Wordpress' default renders; it sends developers down those relatively narrow paths of customizing existing output. It's easy if requirements are flexible enough to allow that, but not the right CMS for truly customized content architecture and presentation.

kirstenbirgit 6y ago
> truly customized content architecture and presentation Can you give an example of something like that which is not possible with WordPress?
- 1123581321 6y ago
  Customized presentation is possible by starting with a blank template. Most do not do that, so if they want to customize, they spend time modifying and working around the default views. This has an effect of constraining the look. The difficulty emulating controller-like behavior means that adding multiple pieces of content to a view takes extra work. As for the content architecture, Wordpress cpt are limited in their ability to relate to others and to define flexible custom fields (even with ACF.) It’s possible to hack together something like what a more flexible CMS or application framework can do, but it’s fragile and takes a lot of boilerplate, which, similar to template customization, steers the developer towards a similar architecture to other sites. For these reasons, increased development and maintenance cost make it unlikely that an attempt to develop something truly customized on Wordpress will be successful. That said, many only know Wordpress development so may still get further with it than with a closer fit to their project.