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I handled the inherent security risk of WP's plugin architecture by meticulously monitoring the plugin-code/plugin publisher, Firewall, File changes, 2FA Auth e

I handled the inherent security risk of WP's plugin architecture by meticulously monitoring the plugin-code/plugin publisher, Firewall, File changes, 2FA Auth etc. I handled the performance drawbacks with best hardware, cache etc. I even accepted the premium for above activities. But random database errors was the final nail in the coffin. After a decade of WP usage, I have ditched it for good. My current web stack for the past 2 years has been - Simple websites- Vanilla HTML, CSS, JS. Blogs - Hugo. Complex Web Applications with CMS - Custom Go framework. I understand that none of the above is applicable to someone who doesn't have web-development experience, Even in that case website-builiders[1] are a better option than WP. At this point, the only reason I'm not nuclear on WP is because I believe there's a thriving economy based on WP especially from developing countries. [1]https://startuptoolchain.com/#website-builders https://startuptoolchain.com/#website-builders (Disclaimer: Mine).

MangoCoffee 5y ago
> there's a thriving economy based on WP a lot of digital marketing/service company use WP to quickly setup a website for their client. my current employer's website is a WP site build by a third party.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  Yep, But I really don't know whether that's for good or bad overall. Good for that 'digital marketing/service company', But there are better options for your employer in terms of cost/performance/security; Better options have been available for over past 5 years.
  - aik 5y ago
    I’m curious what options you are considering here that are comparable and don’t take 10x more technical skill and time? Sites like Squarespace or Wix? Or Webflow?
    - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
      Correct, Those are the ones I've linked to in my original comment. Of course website-builders do come with the caveats of vendor locking, But then again the typical relationship between 'digital marketing/service company' and the client mentioned in the parent comment is often much worse.
  - MangoCoffee 5y ago
    this is just my experiences from years of working in small to mid size company. company tend to see company's website as part of marketing thus marketing dept usually have the final say and they tend to go with what digital marketing/service company recommended. edit: not sure if that's a blessing but at least I don't have to deal with marketing people going over some small details like color...etc. the website that I build is web application for internal use.
koonsolo 5y ago
I can program and am very familiar with web technologies. For my own project https://rpgplayground.com https://rpgplayground.com, I decided to go with WordPress, and I haven't regretted it for a single day. It started out as a landing page and a blog. But then I needed a forum for my users -> install BBPress and done! Was getting some spam comments and posts, so installed some anti spam plugin and captcha plugin. Seemed my users want to post their own games on my platform, so installed the BuddyPress community plugin. Wrote my own plugin to integrate my game builder with the website. I run a Discord server and wanted to notify Discord when a new game is published on my platform, so installed the Discord plugin to push posts to Discord. Plus, I can show Discord activity on my website. Wanted to send out a newsletter for user retention. Very expensive options out there, so I installed a pay-once solution to run this from a wordpress plugin (50k subs and counting). Soon I'm going to implement a marketplace where my users can sell and buy resources. And guess what, you have a WooCommerce plugin and some other one that enables this. Oh yeah, I want to do this with virtual credits, and of course there is a plugin for that. Absolutly awesome! And in the meantime, I can focus my developments on my RPG making tool. I also sometimes hire a cheap developer to implement some custom things, and it works great. Edit: plus, it's really fast to run experiments without losing development time. Just install or enable something, and if it doesn't add value, remove it again.
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  Did you setup a local installation to test drive plugins you want to add to your production installation ?
  - koonsolo 5y ago
    Most of the time I put it straight in production :D. I'm at CET time, and so if I do it in my morning, most users never find out when something would go wrong. But I do have a custom script to create staging and test environments. Custom developments happen there. It's basically copying all files and database, do a few config changes, and you have an exact copy of production that you can play with. I looked into a proper development flow for WordPress, but it's very hard. Mainly because both data and config lives in the same spot. And you always want to work against the latest production vesion, since things might have changed there. So no local setup, only multiple hosted ones. The DevOps flow could be improved, but right now it seems to work out fine. So for custom developments, my developer works on test. Then I check it and move it to staging. There I check again if the update works fine, and do the same on production. It's a pretty good flow for a 1 person project.
innocenat 5y ago
While I don't like WordPress either, I begrudgingly use it. My only wordpress website is a hobbyist news website where 1) 5-6 people need to be able to publish article on it, none of them (except me) have technical experience, and 2) we can only spare $10-$15 per month for the overall cost (and no, there's no way to make money here). This put me in a situation where almost the only option is self-hosted WordPress.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  It makes sense and I think that's the reason WP has survived. In fact I started out like that, later building my startup product website(s) using WP; But once the tech-debt became too high I had to take a call.
- antoinec 5y ago
  Have you looked at https://ghost.org/ https://ghost.org/? Self hosted on DO costs around $5/mo. Though it's much less customizable than WP
PinkPigeon 5y ago
I went the static site via Hugo -> cloudflare workers sites route. It is so vastly superior to fiddling with hosting a SQL database, plugins, constant updates, etc. I built an entire frontend around it (my username .co.uk) which tries to reshape how tech novices work with websites. I have found small business owners I talked to (n=10) to be allergic to dealing with their WordPress or squarespace sites, because despite everything, they are just not simple to use. They just try to cater to too many use cases. Being everything to everyone comes with complexity that's very difficult to navigate as a tech-novice. Though I think squarespace do a better job than WordPress. Albeit more expensive. The funny thing is, people have grown such an aversion to dealing with websites that I am also having quite a hard time trying to get anyone to look at it. As soon as they do though, it's like a lightbulb moment for them, to see how simple it can really be. Naturally the trade off is flexibility, but I haven't had any complaints about that yet. I am not dealing with very complex sites though (and wouldn't want to either).

MangoCoffee 5y ago

> there's a thriving economy based on WP a lot of digital marketing/service company use WP to quickly setup a website for their client. my current employer's website is a WP site build by a third party.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
Yep, But I really don't know whether that's for good or bad overall. Good for that 'digital marketing/service company', But there are better options for your employer in terms of cost/performance/security; Better options have been available for over past 5 years.
- aik 5y ago
  I’m curious what options you are considering here that are comparable and don’t take 10x more technical skill and time? Sites like Squarespace or Wix? Or Webflow?
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    Correct, Those are the ones I've linked to in my original comment. Of course website-builders do come with the caveats of vendor locking, But then again the typical relationship between 'digital marketing/service company' and the client mentioned in the parent comment is often much worse.
- MangoCoffee 5y ago
  this is just my experiences from years of working in small to mid size company. company tend to see company's website as part of marketing thus marketing dept usually have the final say and they tend to go with what digital marketing/service company recommended. edit: not sure if that's a blessing but at least I don't have to deal with marketing people going over some small details like color...etc. the website that I build is web application for internal use.

koonsolo 5y ago

I can program and am very familiar with web technologies. For my own project https://rpgplayground.com https://rpgplayground.com, I decided to go with WordPress, and I haven't regretted it for a single day. It started out as a landing page and a blog. But then I needed a forum for my users -> install BBPress and done! Was getting some spam comments and posts, so installed some anti spam plugin and captcha plugin. Seemed my users want to post their own games on my platform, so installed the BuddyPress community plugin. Wrote my own plugin to integrate my game builder with the website. I run a Discord server and wanted to notify Discord when a new game is published on my platform, so installed the Discord plugin to push posts to Discord. Plus, I can show Discord activity on my website. Wanted to send out a newsletter for user retention. Very expensive options out there, so I installed a pay-once solution to run this from a wordpress plugin (50k subs and counting). Soon I'm going to implement a marketplace where my users can sell and buy resources. And guess what, you have a WooCommerce plugin and some other one that enables this. Oh yeah, I want to do this with virtual credits, and of course there is a plugin for that. Absolutly awesome! And in the meantime, I can focus my developments on my RPG making tool. I also sometimes hire a cheap developer to implement some custom things, and it works great. Edit: plus, it's really fast to run experiments without losing development time. Just install or enable something, and if it doesn't add value, remove it again.

johnchristopher 5y ago
Did you setup a local installation to test drive plugins you want to add to your production installation ?
- koonsolo 5y ago
  Most of the time I put it straight in production :D. I'm at CET time, and so if I do it in my morning, most users never find out when something would go wrong. But I do have a custom script to create staging and test environments. Custom developments happen there. It's basically copying all files and database, do a few config changes, and you have an exact copy of production that you can play with. I looked into a proper development flow for WordPress, but it's very hard. Mainly because both data and config lives in the same spot. And you always want to work against the latest production vesion, since things might have changed there. So no local setup, only multiple hosted ones. The DevOps flow could be improved, but right now it seems to work out fine. So for custom developments, my developer works on test. Then I check it and move it to staging. There I check again if the update works fine, and do the same on production. It's a pretty good flow for a 1 person project.

innocenat 5y ago

While I don't like WordPress either, I begrudgingly use it. My only wordpress website is a hobbyist news website where 1) 5-6 people need to be able to publish article on it, none of them (except me) have technical experience, and 2) we can only spare $10-$15 per month for the overall cost (and no, there's no way to make money here). This put me in a situation where almost the only option is self-hosted WordPress.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
It makes sense and I think that's the reason WP has survived. In fact I started out like that, later building my startup product website(s) using WP; But once the tech-debt became too high I had to take a call.
antoinec 5y ago
Have you looked at https://ghost.org/ https://ghost.org/? Self hosted on DO costs around $5/mo. Though it's much less customizable than WP

PinkPigeon 5y ago

I went the static site via Hugo -> cloudflare workers sites route. It is so vastly superior to fiddling with hosting a SQL database, plugins, constant updates, etc. I built an entire frontend around it (my username .co.uk) which tries to reshape how tech novices work with websites. I have found small business owners I talked to (n=10) to be allergic to dealing with their WordPress or squarespace sites, because despite everything, they are just not simple to use. They just try to cater to too many use cases. Being everything to everyone comes with complexity that's very difficult to navigate as a tech-novice. Though I think squarespace do a better job than WordPress. Albeit more expensive. The funny thing is, people have grown such an aversion to dealing with websites that I am also having quite a hard time trying to get anyone to look at it. As soon as they do though, it's like a lightbulb moment for them, to see how simple it can really be. Naturally the trade off is flexibility, but I haven't had any complaints about that yet. I am not dealing with very complex sites though (and wouldn't want to either).