5 ms·

From an operations perspective, gatsby and next.js are much simpler though. You are just deploying static content behind a webserver or even something like s3.

by thayne 6y ago

From an operations perspective, gatsby and next.js are much simpler though. You are just deploying static content behind a webserver or even something like s3. Horizontal scaling is almost trivial. With wordpress though, you have to worry about a database as well, scaling is more complicated, you need to run php on your webservers (which has security implications), updates that include schema updates frequently require downtime, etc.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
irjustin 6y ago
Horizontal scaling for static content is just as trivial if not more trivial in WordPress with the plugins. [Edit] downvotes are fine but let's open up discussion. Further edit, WP has great static content manager plugins. It's not direct to S3 but a single server can handle a lot of traffic in that mode. The part that becomes significantly easier is updating that content or adding new ones. You don't need devops to rebuild and redeploy.
- thayne 6y ago
  I think we are talking about different things. I'm not talking about static assets that you use in your site. I mean the entire site is static, and thus doesn't require any database or any server-side page generation. Which means not only that it is easier to scale since you don't even have any state in the database, but each node can also handle more traffic, because it is doing less. (And if you something like s3 or github pages, or netlify, you don't even need to worry about individual servers). > The part that becomes significantly easier is updating that content or adding new ones. You don't need devops to rebuild and redeploy. From my perspective as an SRE, that's actually a bad thing. I've seen content creators take down big parts of the site because they changed or deleted an asset. Most of the time that could have been caught by automated tests as part of a build pipeline, if one had been in place. There is certainly a trade-off though. Wordpress and Drupal are great for quick turnaround content creation and editing. If you want your changes to be live as soon as you make them , Wordpress is better at that than a static site generator. On the other hand if you want rock-solid stability, and want any changes to go through a gamut of automated tests, Wordpress is not a good fit. It is possible, but it definitely isn't easy.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    > I think we are talking about different things. No, you aren’t. Wordpress has plugins to generate static html for all of the posts so visitors can be served without database hits.
    - marc_io 6y ago
      There are also webhosts that specialize exactly in this kind of feature, generating those static assets and hosting them for you.
irrational 6y ago
Wait, what non-trivial site doesn’t require a database?
- monoideism 6y ago
  Many, many informational web sites do not require a database, including many non-trivial sites I've done for clients. Hugo is particularly adept for non-trivial static sites (via it's ability to use built-time API json data, etc).
- giantDinosaur 6y ago
  All websites require a source for their data (i.e. a database), but many websites don't really need to be directly connected to a SQL database for nearly every page request or similar and can just use really simple files in S3 or something.
- toast0 6y ago
  Most corporate blogs with comments disabled would be fine as a filesystem, rather than a database.
- earthboundkid 6y ago
  JSON files in a git repo will get you really far if you want it to.
deanclatworthy 6y ago
There are static site builders for Wordpress so you can use WP only as an admin tool and deploy a package to s3 or whatever. Build times are relatively trivial unless you have 10s of 1000s of pages.
867-5309 6y ago
>you need to run php on your webservers are you suggesting to run it remotely? on even a small site the performance impact would be noticeable. also, you'd then be securing two systems instead of one
pembrook 6y ago
You’re not wrong, but you’re missing the point. The “operations” perspective is the least important perspective on any marketing site/blog. Design flexibility in production, marketing features and multi-author content production are the only thing that matters. Gatsby is built by developers, for developers. And it’s hilariously out of touch with the needs of anybody else. We’re almost 10 years into the static site ecosystem and there’s still no easy way to do even 1/10th of what Wordpress can do without building everything from scratch and duct taping it together with a rigid headless CMS in the middle.
- thayne 6y ago
  > The “operations” perspective is the least important perspective on any marketing site/blog. It definitely isn't for the marketing sites and blogs I maintain. Site stability and reliability trump how convenient it is for marketing content creators to release changes. Better to have a site that doesn't have the latest change than a site that is completely down, or worse a site hacked because of a vulnerability in the CMS. Is that true for every site? Absolutely not! Although it seems like it would be for whitehouse.gov.
  - pembrook 6y ago
    > Site stability and reliability trump how convenient it is for marketing content creators You’re optimizing for the wrong thing then. Content creation, driving traffic to the site, and converting that traffic is the harder, more important task. Your role is the easiest, most trivial one. On the spectrum of engineering problems, I’d place self driving cars and sentient AI somewhere on the right side labeled difficult. On the left side of the scale, at the far edge labeled easiest, I’d place “keeping a wordpress site online.” 40% of the internet is powered by Wordpress, so I think a few hundred million people have figured it out. On the other hand, 99% of all websites get little to no traffic. Maybe this is the difficult part you should be optimizing for instead?
    - thayne 6y ago
      > On the other hand, 99% of all websites get little to no traffic. Maybe this is the difficult part you should be optimizing for instead? Well, the sites I'm talking about get enough traffic that if they are down for a few minutes people notice, and a single wordpress server isn't enough to handle the traffic ;). If you have little to no traffic that's less of an issue.
marc_io 6y ago
This is why I generally recommend a solution like Publii (also Open Source) for simple sites that don't need extreme flexibility. It's “client friendly“ as WordPress, but generates static content in nature.

by thayne 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

irjustin 6y ago

Horizontal scaling for static content is just as trivial if not more trivial in WordPress with the plugins. [Edit] downvotes are fine but let's open up discussion. Further edit, WP has great static content manager plugins. It's not direct to S3 but a single server can handle a lot of traffic in that mode. The part that becomes significantly easier is updating that content or adding new ones. You don't need devops to rebuild and redeploy.

thayne 6y ago
I think we are talking about different things. I'm not talking about static assets that you use in your site. I mean the entire site is static, and thus doesn't require any database or any server-side page generation. Which means not only that it is easier to scale since you don't even have any state in the database, but each node can also handle more traffic, because it is doing less. (And if you something like s3 or github pages, or netlify, you don't even need to worry about individual servers). > The part that becomes significantly easier is updating that content or adding new ones. You don't need devops to rebuild and redeploy. From my perspective as an SRE, that's actually a bad thing. I've seen content creators take down big parts of the site because they changed or deleted an asset. Most of the time that could have been caught by automated tests as part of a build pipeline, if one had been in place. There is certainly a trade-off though. Wordpress and Drupal are great for quick turnaround content creation and editing. If you want your changes to be live as soon as you make them , Wordpress is better at that than a static site generator. On the other hand if you want rock-solid stability, and want any changes to go through a gamut of automated tests, Wordpress is not a good fit. It is possible, but it definitely isn't easy.
- kortilla 6y ago
  > I think we are talking about different things. No, you aren’t. Wordpress has plugins to generate static html for all of the posts so visitors can be served without database hits.
  - marc_io 6y ago
    There are also webhosts that specialize exactly in this kind of feature, generating those static assets and hosting them for you.

irrational 6y ago

Wait, what non-trivial site doesn’t require a database?

monoideism 6y ago
Many, many informational web sites do not require a database, including many non-trivial sites I've done for clients. Hugo is particularly adept for non-trivial static sites (via it's ability to use built-time API json data, etc).
giantDinosaur 6y ago
All websites require a source for their data (i.e. a database), but many websites don't really need to be directly connected to a SQL database for nearly every page request or similar and can just use really simple files in S3 or something.
toast0 6y ago
Most corporate blogs with comments disabled would be fine as a filesystem, rather than a database.
earthboundkid 6y ago
JSON files in a git repo will get you really far if you want it to.

deanclatworthy 6y ago

There are static site builders for Wordpress so you can use WP only as an admin tool and deploy a package to s3 or whatever. Build times are relatively trivial unless you have 10s of 1000s of pages.

867-5309 6y ago

>you need to run php on your webservers are you suggesting to run it remotely? on even a small site the performance impact would be noticeable. also, you'd then be securing two systems instead of one

pembrook 6y ago

You’re not wrong, but you’re missing the point. The “operations” perspective is the least important perspective on any marketing site/blog. Design flexibility in production, marketing features and multi-author content production are the only thing that matters. Gatsby is built by developers, for developers. And it’s hilariously out of touch with the needs of anybody else. We’re almost 10 years into the static site ecosystem and there’s still no easy way to do even 1/10th of what Wordpress can do without building everything from scratch and duct taping it together with a rigid headless CMS in the middle.

thayne 6y ago
> The “operations” perspective is the least important perspective on any marketing site/blog. It definitely isn't for the marketing sites and blogs I maintain. Site stability and reliability trump how convenient it is for marketing content creators to release changes. Better to have a site that doesn't have the latest change than a site that is completely down, or worse a site hacked because of a vulnerability in the CMS. Is that true for every site? Absolutely not! Although it seems like it would be for whitehouse.gov.
- pembrook 6y ago
  > Site stability and reliability trump how convenient it is for marketing content creators You’re optimizing for the wrong thing then. Content creation, driving traffic to the site, and converting that traffic is the harder, more important task. Your role is the easiest, most trivial one. On the spectrum of engineering problems, I’d place self driving cars and sentient AI somewhere on the right side labeled difficult. On the left side of the scale, at the far edge labeled easiest, I’d place “keeping a wordpress site online.” 40% of the internet is powered by Wordpress, so I think a few hundred million people have figured it out. On the other hand, 99% of all websites get little to no traffic. Maybe this is the difficult part you should be optimizing for instead?
  - thayne 6y ago
    > On the other hand, 99% of all websites get little to no traffic. Maybe this is the difficult part you should be optimizing for instead? Well, the sites I'm talking about get enough traffic that if they are down for a few minutes people notice, and a single wordpress server isn't enough to handle the traffic ;). If you have little to no traffic that's less of an issue.

marc_io 6y ago

This is why I generally recommend a solution like Publii (also Open Source) for simple sites that don't need extreme flexibility. It's “client friendly“ as WordPress, but generates static content in nature.