18 ms·

WordPress has left the building

• nokykhk 15y ago
  then what is your choice now? joomla ?
• jinushaun 15y ago
  I think WP is great and the platform has tons of neat plugins. However, even though people try to use WP as a general purpose CMS, it still has its roots in blogging.
• hm2k 15y ago
  What's the alternative?
  • bobfunk 15y ago
    We're working hard at building the best fully hosted one at http://www.webpop.com http://www.webpop.com Our aim is to get close to the power of something like Drupal with a simple and usable interface that's a joy to use. All fully hosted, requiring no maintenance. We're the only hosted system that is also truly extendible (you can build extensions in server-side javascript) and we're seeing both tiny one-pages and large content driven pages being built with our product by now.
  • astrodust 15y ago
    That's the sad part of the story.
  • hanalei 15y ago
    concrete5 cms is pretty decent.
    • buro9 15y ago
      You may well be right, but I think you should have disclosed your status in the concrete5 community and the fact that you've contributed code to concrete5 and created the blog app. Mostly because as a first-time poster, no-one knows you here and it would be good to see some impartiality or at least a critical argument about what sets concrete5 apart in respect to addressing the concerns of the article.
      • hanalei 15y ago
        buro9, I guess I should have, but i merely stated that a CMS that i know and actively develop for vs. one that the OP is apparently unhappy with. I'm not a bot trying to funnel people into concrete5, I merely intended to provide an alternative without jumping down OP's throat with a canned "critical argument" because I am not a concrete5 evangelist or anything of that sort.
      • aftk2 15y ago
        Heh. I'm sure no one else posting in these threads has any sort of deep ties to the software they're recommending.
  • FraaJad 15y ago
    Plone -- http://plone.org/ http://plone.org/
    • keithpeter 15y ago
      WordPress can be installed on hosted Web server space under a user account with no admin access. Plone needs admin rights and runs a daemon. Note: I'm not suggesting that the author's organisation did use WP that way. I agree with others above that the author could have mentioned alternatives.
      • FraaJad 15y ago
        If you want a CMS and know what a full fledged CMS does, you wouldn't even mention wordpress in the same sentence. Ease of install and being able to run on a $3/mo hosting plan is not the game CMSes play.
        • keithpeter 15y ago
          True, but WordPress can play that managed server game, and we know little of what kinds of installation the author was talking about. PS: I was thinking more £30 to £100/month with someone else handling the platform...
  • zalew 15y ago
    Write spec, hire dev, build your own.
    • antidaily 15y ago
      I can't think of a bigger waste of time. That is, unless you've somehow convinced a client to pay you to do it.
      • buremba 15y ago
        I suggest Drupal for huge projects but in many case Drupal is so advanced for creating a medium-sized project. For the beginning it may be hard but when you created your CMS or a CMS framework (I would prefer calling CMS framework for such a system), you will found it's incredibly flexible and easy (in many cases) to setup a new project as Drupal or any other CMS.
      • zalew 15y ago
        your second sentence answers your doubts from the first.
  • JTxt 15y ago
    Drupal. (Although it has it share of cons too, it can do many of the items on the list. Some require coercing, but doable.) edit, in progress: - Document management- No, not Word, Excel files etc. but can do revisions/diffs on site content, and manage files to some degree. - Workflow management- http://drupal.org/project/workflow http://drupal.org/project/workflow - Digital asset management- http://drupal.org/project/media http://drupal.org/project/media - Link management - http://drupal.org/project/pathauto http://drupal.org/project/pathauto and others... not sure what you need here. - User management - Default may do what you need, can do more. - ESI Caching / CDN ability. - (no esi in drupal 7) / http://drupal.org/project/cdn http://drupal.org/project/cdn - WYSIWYG editing- Many options but sometimes flaky. - Single Sign-on- http://drupal.org/project/bakery http://drupal.org/project/bakery - Multi-side Admin - Not sure. Different user groups can have different access. - Publishing options - Quite a few. what do you need? - Access Management - http://drupal.org/project/acl http://drupal.org/project/acl and more. - Application - ? - Multi-lingual - http://drupal.org/project/i18n http://drupal.org/project/i18n - n-to-n content sharing- user to user sharing? - Reporting - what kind? Disclaimer: I've used it for a few projects; More experience than word-press or joomla.
    • Ecio78 15y ago
      Disclaimer: i've used Drupal for a couple of projects and I like it for its easyness for noncoder, this is just about the cons: Drupal is very good and powerful (i think the best part is the ability to create custom contents with CCK - now included in core in D7), surely more "CMS" than WP, but it's far from being perfect. As someone wrote in another comment, sometimes it's a nightmare (theming or just finding the right module and hoping it wont give you problems with other modules). There are also people saying it has become more and more overbloated http://www.unleashedmind.com/en/blog/sun/the-drupal-crisis http://www.unleashedmind.com/en/blog/sun/the-drupal-crisis others stating that it's better to move to more developing oriented framework: http://erickennedy.org/Drupal-7-Reasons-to-Switch http://erickennedy.org/Drupal-7-Reasons-to-Switch and big consulting company that has worked with Drupal and is now moving to other: http://drupalradar.com/breaking-development-seed-quits-drupal http://drupalradar.com/breaking-development-seed-quits-drupa... I think every single CMS/platform/framework can be criticized or even demonized if you search well.
  • dlapiduz 15y ago
    Concrete5 is a pretty cool new CMS that has a lot of the features that this guy asks for. http://www.concrete5.org/ http://www.concrete5.org/
    • aftk2 15y ago
      Thanks! Appreciate the mention. We try to bring some new approaches to the open source cms space. (note: I'm the core team leader of concrete5)
  • stef25 15y ago
    I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Expression Engine yet and am curious to hear people's opinions about it.
    • mknx 15y ago
      Suggested using EE before for a few clients. They turned down because of the license and hassle to renew it.
      • nathos 15y ago
        EE simplified their license with version 2, and there is no ongoing/renewal license fee: http://expressionengine.com/sales_faq/article/do_i_have_to_buy_a_new_license_every_year http://expressionengine.com/sales_faq/article/do_i_have_to_b...
        • mknx 15y ago
          This was for 2.0. Back then it was 1.6. No longer look at EE these days, just make use of FuelPHP.
    • wonderyak 15y ago
      A lot of us would love to be able to chime in on EE, I'm sure. Not having a downloadable demo or some way of checking out without paying $200 makes it way lower down the list when you're looking for alternatives. I would love to check it out; but if I don't like it or it won't work for my clients it's a total hassle.
      • timmaah 15y ago
        Not having a demo available is beyond ridiculous. I asked about it in their forums and was told to email sales. I went ahead with the purchase anyway. It would not take much for them to setup a personal sandbox demo just like spree commerce does ( http://spreecommerce.com/demo http://spreecommerce.com/demo ) It can't be that they don't want people to think the product is too complicated before purchase, as their after purchase help docs are limited and they have no personal follow up or checkin.
  • spohlenz 15y ago
    I recently released the first version of Wheelhouse CMS - https://www.wheelhousecms.com https://www.wheelhousecms.com, which is a Rails-based CMS including WYSIWYG editing, template-based form generation, media library, plugins and a decent UI. It's not free software but from my biased perspective its by far the best CMS I've ever used and my clients love it. Demo here: http://demo.wheelhousecms.com http://demo.wheelhousecms.com
• rglover 15y ago
  Good post. Curious, though, about what alternatives they're testing. Wish this would have read less like a eulogy and more like suggestions for potential fixes.
• scotch_drinker 15y ago
  Wait so he's complaining that a free piece of software that is designed to "create a beautiful website or blog" (from Wordpress.org) doesn't cut it as a high powered CMS? I think if we're honest, wordpress is a blogging platform and if you try to deform it into your own little niche needs, you need to accept the inherent risks.
  • kanamekun 15y ago
    The post mentions that the issues extend into WordPress' regular redesigns of the admin interface, and their consistent lack of solid testing: "This would actually be a much smaller issue if it wasn’t for the WordPress’ update schedule. I am 100% for constant updating of software, but the current desire to redesign the AdminUI 2-3 times a year creates a huge amount of friction from both clients and developers." "Kev, they released a BETA version that they didn’t even load on Windows. The MENU didn’t work. Not some advanced feature throwing a bug, the fucking MENU didn’t work. I can’t test our themes and software against that. Lets be honest mate, how did it get past their tester and release procedure? Oh, thats right, they dont have a Tester. They just load it on their MacBooks and presume it works for the other 95% of the world. It’s a fucking shambles, and clearly they’ve learnt nothing since the 3.0 fuck-up." I work with WordPress a lot, and have regularly had similar issues. Even as a blogging platform, WordPress is increasingly difficult to manage.
    • chc 15y ago
      That portion of the post is the opposite of what I'd pick out to illustrate that it has a point. It's just dripping with misplaced rage and entitlement and doesn't even point out a bug in any shipping version of WordPress. It strongly emphasizes the word "BETA" and then goes on to literally curse them out for the fact that it had major bugs. Like, yeah, that's what that means. Do you go grabbing a cook's half-done risotto and tell them to quit because the consistency is terrible? I agree that WordPress's issues multiply in proportion to how much you want it to do, but the fact that prerelease software has bugs is not one of them.
      • kelnos 15y ago
• unavoidable 15y ago
  This guy seems to be arguing that Wordpress should turn into a Drupal-like app, which it was never designed to do. Although I am also guilty of using WP for CMS on some simple sites, this is mostly due to convenience of installation and (mostly) ease of use for clients. I don't think most developers who use WordPress seriously consider it a "professional" CMS solution. On the other hand, the alternatives kind of suck. This author doesn't even recommend one, which is odd considering he purports to have recommended WP to everyone for the last 4 years. Most other CMS solutions I've used over the last years have either been vastly overkill and overly cumbersome, or still severely lacking the features he describes as lacking in WP. It usually turned out almost as easy to develop your own skeleton CMS depending on the site's needs. Also, why is the font on the site so large?
  • tstegart 15y ago
    The font size seems fine to me (Windows Vista, Firefox). The lack of an apostrophe in the last word, however, is killing me.
    • unavoidable 15y ago
      For some reason the site is trying to fill my entire monitor even though I have my window using only half the screen (Chrome, OSX). The font size I'm seeing is 25px for the body text...
    • eslachance 15y ago
      It's also pretty large for me too, font size 25px. Another error I caught: softwre I guess he needs spell check on top of WYSIWYG, too?
• gchucky 15y ago
  Until now I haven't really been able to encapsulate my feelings towards Wordpress, but this hits most of the big points. One can really only do so much with custom post types and custom fields before the question has to be asked if it would better to build a new CMS. Rolling a custom CMS every time a client needs something isn't really a good, flexible solution. There are other options out there, like CMSes built on top of existing frameworks (e.g. Diem or Sympal, which are built on Symfony), but I'm not really sure how viable those are. I am curious if anyone else has other ideas...
• amuraru 15y ago
  Then the author should migrate his own blog from WP.
  • calloc 15y ago
    Why? Just because he is no longer using it for business purposes doesn't mean it isn't still perfect for what it was designed to do, blogging.
    • kels 15y ago
      I think he means if you are going to hate, hate on it all the way.
      • kevinjohn 15y ago
        "I love WordPress. With it, I have felt a genuine affinity for a product the likes of which is matched only by my Commodore64." Who's hating?
        • pbhjpbhj 15y ago
          >"It will be exceptionally strange for me to no longer recommend WordPress." So presumably this is hyperbole and you'd still recommend it, only for a more limited range of sites. The big question, as others have said I think, is what do you now recommend?
  • tnorthcutt 15y ago
    While I disagree with the author, he acknowledges that WP is good for blogging. He's arguing that it's not suitable as a general purpose CMS (for his clients).
• FraaJad 15y ago
  Time and again, people want to use a hacked up blogging engine as a CMS and lament that it is not working. Use a CMS that's been around for more than decade which has all the features you want in a proper CMS (single sign on, WYSIWGY, multi-lingual support, a huge community of developers and service providers). ie., Plone -- http://plone.org http://plone.org
  • smacktoward 15y ago
    The problem with CMSes that have "all the features you want" is that they have so many features that the average user who just needs to plonk some content down on a page and periodically edit it can't wade through all the features to figure out how to do that. (I don't say this to pick on Plone -- I'm a big fan of the TYPO3[1] CMS, for instance, which does lots of the things that he mentions very well, but the downside to that power is that it's insanely hard for normal people to pick up and use.) [1] http://typo3.org http://typo3.org
    • beza1e1 15y ago
      A few years ago i recommended website baker as a nice simple CMS, which is also hackable if necessary. That was three years ago. Maybe the situation has changed, but i would never recommend a complexity-monster like Typo3. Typo3 is "enterprisy" in the negative sense. http://www.websitebaker2.org http://www.websitebaker2.org
      • smacktoward 15y ago
        Don't be too hard on TYPO3, it has its virtues. For instance, it has the most elegant handling of multilingual content I've ever found in fifteen years of working with CMSes. But for a small single-language site (i.e. 99% of the sites people develop) it's definitely overkill.
        • intheory0 15y ago
          For as complex as it is, TYPO3 is pretty usable. I built a site on TYPO3 before I ever messed with WordPress some 6 years ago. Now that I think of it, I'd probably opt for TYPO3 before Drupal.
• saltcod 15y ago
  After about 10 minutes with Plone, a few months with Joomla, about 2 years with Drupal, and finally 3 years with WordPress, I think WordPress is still a brilliant solution for lots of problems. The closest competitor, Drupal, is an absolute nightmare. For designers, developers and certainly for the end user. It still doesn't even ship with a wysiwyg editor—hard to disagree that this is precisely what the end user wants. In Drupal, developing themes is a nightmare, theming Views output is an absolute disaster, and upgrading modules/core will almost certainly result in a whitescreen. I don't see an alternative to WordPress at the moment. If you want to give you clients a reasonable admin interface I don't see another way around it. And I don't find that clients mind it changing 2-3 times a year—they all say it gets better each time. Though it certainly is blog-oriented, and you will have to twist and bend it to act as a CMS, having to do this is a lot more fun than trying to wrangle a Views template file.
  • deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  • robertp 15y ago
    Agreed. Before Automattic hired an in-house ui/ux person the admin interface was pretty rough and not pleasant to look at and reasonably okay to use. Moving forward from 3.0 the admin interface should still about the same with incremental refinements.
  • garethsprice 15y ago
    Drupal is halfway between an application framework (like Ruby) and a CMS (like Wordpress). For complex, content-driven sites there's nothing out there that comes close to providing the functionality that it does. It's definitely overkill for a simple Wordpress style use case, where you have a user who wants to post to a blog. But it provides a lot of the functionality that the OP listed as missing from Wordpress. There are plenty of cases where you would not need a WYSIWYG editor on a website - for example, when it's simply providing a web services API to another application, when it's just a front-end aggregating content from another source or when it's being used for mobile. All of which you can do with Drupal. It's certainly not perfect, but it's definitely got it's uses.
• intheory0 15y ago
  I've used Wordpress on a number of sites for small businesses & restaurants lately. In every case it has fit the bill. Other CMSs I've looked at are way overkill, and while I've toyed with the idea of building my own custom CMS, the fact is I can get everything I need in a 5-minute WordPress installation and 30 minutes of plugin configuration. Theme development is straight-forward and relatively well-documented. The investment in rolling your own is a mite more than 35 minutes. Even the act of walling off or hiding portions of Drupal is more involved than that.
• rvkennedy 15y ago
  In the OP: they dont have a Tester. They just load it on their MacBooks and presume it works for the other 95% of the world Really, wordpress.org users are the testers, wordpress.com users are the customers. I'd love to hear what the OP now recommends though, that would provide some good perspective.
  • dextorious 15y ago
    Really? You have to ask? Tons of free software projects have ESTABLISHED testing procedures. Have some of your developers/project members sit and check it is OK before shipping it. Even more so, if you have a huge company and PAID developers on the project (Automatic).
• krogsgard 15y ago
  WordPress core is not trying to be all things to all people. But can he tell me a CMS that makes it simpler to build out the requirements for a vast majority of the websites in the world? If you are looking for a custom feature set on a project that you claim WordPress doesn't meet your needs, then build a custom CMS for the job and charge appropriately. WordPress allows organizations and individuals to have massive power in their website for a fraction of the cost of a custom CMS. And in comparison to a custom CMS, it gets a great deal of testing. WordPress is always looking for new contributors, and if your solution isn't something that works for core and the WordPress core philosophy, then you can extend your idea via a plugin. And in the author's list of things WordPress "has either no, or severely limited" support for, he is way off the boat. There are a slew of highly talented developers that either having working solutions for or are working on almost all of those things, and more.
• reustle 15y ago
  This is what happens when you try to use a blog as a CMS.
  • antidaily 15y ago
    It's a fine CMS... better than most.
• wyck 15y ago
  These are the growing pains a lot of WP developers face at some point. The problem is that WordPress is really, really good at basic things. Things which involve end users and ease of functionality, this covers quite a bit of actual work. The problem arises when you need to extend that functionality outside the box, you're used to working with something great, you're taking it for granted that it can do anything. Well it can't, some very basic functions like say a forms API or media API which you consider essential , does not even exist. I think there has been a strain lately that the core team, especially with J. Wells leadership, has concentrated WAY to much on UI and Design. Developers are starting to look elsewhere for actual functionality that keeps up, the problem is so far there is not much out there that is easy to use.
• danso 15y ago
  This piece is not particularly constructive. While it's not required for an opinion piece to present the perfect alternative in order to rant against the status quo...to say "Wordpress sucks" and say nothing about the alternatives...? What good does that do? I can think of lots of alternatives for the OP but all of them have certain costs/tradeoffs that are prohibitive in many scenarios. The OP goes into great detail describe how WP doesn't meet his needs...I'm really fascinated to know what alternative he's considered that does meet his clients need and that is realistically doable?
  • Apple-Guy 15y ago
    Exactly. The author does not understand that if a theme is designed properly, an admin can mark comment as spam without editing the post. In addition, just about every single thing he thinks core Wordpress lacks can be added easily with a plug-in.
    • jessedhillon 15y ago
      Consider this: in defense of WP, you're suggesting that the OP work around broken ACLs by installing a theme which allows users to circumvent the security model.
    • kevinjohn 15y ago
      Sir, you have missed the point. You need the CAPABILITY to be able to edit posts to be able to mark comments as spam. Many of my clients want to be able to delegate SPAM marking, but not have that person be able to edit any content on the website. WordPress has hardcoded these two CAPABILITIES together for the last 13 releases.
      • Apple-Guy 15y ago
        What about using spam filters + Disqus? <1% of spam gets through by using spam filters.
      • capsule_toy 15y ago
        Personally, I would create my own fork with this capability and try to convince Wordpress to incorporate my changes. How certain are you that you're going to find software that won't have similar problems? One of the reasons I like open source is that I have control and can make changes when necessary. edit - also, you basically have customers that are saying they have a pain point, please solve it. I would tell them that Wordpress is designed for the majority and there may be edge cases that don't cover their particular usage. If they would like a customized solution, you can do it for them but it will cost x amount of dollars.
• markrickert 15y ago
  Cached version. He's using Wordpress and probably doesn't have a caching plugin installed. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://kevinjohngallagher.com/2012/01/wordpress-has-left-the-building/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
• jsavimbi 15y ago
  I find it hard to criticize the author for his obvious misunderstanding of the purpose of a certain piece of software and its inability to be anything other than what it is, as many people have tried and continue to try and convert their particular flavor of blogging software into the mess that is CMS and god forbid, an app. It serves neither purpose well and someone who who claims to have been working on the internets ever since their immaculate inception should know better than to recommend [hosted] Wordpress to anyone other than the random dreamer who still thinks that they need a website from which to pontificate. In good conscience, I no longer even do that, as I find it to be a cruel exercise to inflict on someone who's otherwise harmless.
• smacktoward 15y ago
  Generally speaking software tends to either start powerful and try to work its way towards usability, or start usable and try to work its way towards power. The latter approach almost always beats the former. A simple but usable product attracts new users, those new users eventually start demanding features, the features eventually get added, the new features make the product attractive to more people, some of those people become new users, they demand even more features, etc. It's a virtuous circle. The powerful but complicated product, on the other hand, doesn't attract new users, and its existing users learn to live with its idiosyncrasies, either because they want to or because their boss orders them to. So there's never enough real pressure on the developers to make it truly usable, which means it doesn't attract new users, which means there's no pressure to make it more usable, etc. It's a vicious circle. WordPress has been pursuing the start-simple-and-get-powerful model, and they've made a lot more progress in that direction over the last couple of years than the start-powerful-and-get-usable (Drupal, Plone, TYPO3, etc.) have at making themselves more usable.
  • hippich 15y ago
    I do know nothing about Plone and TYPO3, but I had quite a lot of experience with Wordpress and Drupal. Do not be tricked by default Drupal installation UI. Drupal is very configurable by downloading right modules. (obviously you need to have experience with Drupal to know that). And I am not talking about code side...
    • smacktoward 15y ago
      > Do not be tricked by default Drupal installation UI Defaults are extremely powerful things. For most users they are all of your product they will ever experience. If your default settings are off-putting, people will feel that your software is off-putting. The defaults are the welcome mat. If the welcome mat is studded with titanium spikes coated with blowfish toxin, you shouldn't be surprised if people aren't eager to walk through the door.
      • hippich 15y ago
        You are talking about _users_, not developers developing _for_ users. Op is _developer_.
• reedlaw 15y ago
  I'm surprised there's no mention of the vulnerabilities in Wordpress or its plugins. I've had nothing but virus infestations on nearly every Wordpress install I've set up. I'm sure the problem lies more with the random plugins, but Wordpress itself sure makes it easy to find and install plugins with no kind of security audit.
  • Karunamon 15y ago
    Not sure how this is a problem with Wordpress. I'm sure a critical analysis of, say, the Firefox and Chrome plugins sites would turn up some quantity of malware as well. The trick is to not download random plugins; stick to things with lots of reviews and lots of downloads. Installing some security plugins will help (WebsiteDefender, both the plugin and the service, is a good example), as will putting your site behind a protective CDN like CloudFlare (and since they're free, there's really no good reason not to do this..)
• tumpak 15y ago
  • If you are looking for an All-in-one Content Management System, I doubt WordPress or any other competitors would satisfy you. • WordPress comes with an attitude and a path. And as long as you are in this same attitude and path, you are fine. Otherwise it's best to part ways...and stop complaining... • You should have spent more time building plugins to complement the WordPress System. You waited for others to deliver to you... (which is a bad call for a developer of your stature)
• mildweed 15y ago
  Wordpress is still great for small businesses. The problems he was listing off tend to be issues for large organizations.
  • saltcod 15y ago
    I've found WordPress to be perfect for small-medium sized things. Blog posts/news, static pages, image galleries, easy Youtube, dead simple social addons, etc, etc. I'd argue that WordPress is extremely solid and mature for these uses.
  • mjwalshe 15y ago
    Funny at least one BIG publisher i know of is looking to move from MT to WP
  • pacomerh 15y ago
    This is exactly the correct response to this article. He is looking for features this platform is not intended for. Developers have mutated this system by building a ton of plugins that extend WP to match a full featured CMS, and to be honest that's what most people look for, an easy solution to extend a website and connectivity with the popular API's like twitter, dropbox, flickr, crm's , etc. But you should be aware of its limitations.
• nanodeath 15y ago
  I'd like to respond to some things a number of people have commented on HN here... 1) Wordpress might seem like just a blogging engine, but this is not how the WP developers see it -- on the Wordpress .org About page, it's described as "[Wordpress] has evolved to be used as full content management system" (sic). So they expect people to use it as a CMS. 2) Plone, unless you have a lot of technical chops, is a nightmare to use and maintain. My SO had one set up for her non-profit less than a year ago and they've had so many problems with memory, weird WYSIWIG bugs/behavior (stripping all sorts of tags, including nobr, for one), confusing configuration, costly and/or poor quality plugins, frequent need to modify source, etc that they're looking to move off it ASAP. So I wouldn't recommend it if you're setting up an instance for non-technical folk.
  • pbhjpbhj 15y ago
    >So they expect people to use it as a CMS. And they appear to facilitate that. But, it tellingly IMO, doesn't say that WP was designed as a CMS or even that it was modified to become a CMS just that it has grown to be used as a CMS.
    • maaku 15y ago
      Things changed drastically with 3.0. Wordpress is now much better described as a CMS with built-in blogging defaults.
• datums 15y ago
  why have a tester work on a beta version? It's free software labelled Beta , it doesn't load on IE x , this happens. If it was released as stable, then there's a reason. You wouldn't be deploying the beta version to your clients anyway. But here is the point. You are running a for profit business, use a tool that fits the needs of your clients and the skill set of your staff. Have it built. WordPress doesn't have the features you need, things you want are not on the roadmap, and it's buggy. Why didn't you switch away earlier ?
• crikli 15y ago
  WordPress wasn't ever in the building. Or at least it wasn't in the building the author wanted it to be. Lots of folks have tried to force Wordpress to be more than a blog platform. I've always seen these efforts in the same light as when guys dumps tons of money and time squeezing horsepower of a Honda Civic: end of the day, it's still a Civic that get its lunch eaten by a stock 'Vette. Look, you just don't get power and flexibility in the same package as intuitive and simple. The best you can do is cut one to boost another. Take iOS. Intuitive as hell. Flexible as a piece of rebar. Drupal's been mentioned in other comments. It's crazy powerful and very flexible... it's the Corvette to the hopped up Civic that is Wordpress. It's also hard to learn, the interface can be...challenging and the plumbing is complex. Edit: Downvote me if you must but at least communicate why...did you build a 11 second Civic or something? ;)
  • rokhayakebe 15y ago
    as I've viewed when guys dumps tons of money and time squeezing horsepower of a Honda Civic Exactly. It's still a fucking Honda, and for the time/money spent on it you should have bought a Lexus. Similarly you can tweak wordpress all day long, in the end it's a blogging software.
    • photomatt 15y ago
      FWIW, 92% of WordPress users we surveyed are using it as a CMS. People seem to like to say "it's just blogging software" to put us in a box, but people are using it for so much more, and most much happier than the OP.
      • crikli 15y ago
        How did you define CMS? I've learned (the hard way) that the acronym does not have a uniform definition. Wordpress is the PHP of web publishing platforms. The barrier to entry is low, you can get decent results quickly, and it provides a great deal of power to the unskilled user. There are lots of things that it's good for; I'd say, in fact that in most cases it's all a company needs. But it's really easy for it to become the only tool in the box, and pretty soon someone is in over his head trying to brute force it into being the solution to a problem that it was never designed to solve.
• mknx 15y ago
  I no longer accept and build projects using WordPress. These days, I stick with FuelPHP. Good authentication and blog package to start with.
• skeltoac 15y ago
  There could hardly be a broader and more vague software category than "CMS". As an exercise, write down the top ten features you expect from a CMS. See how these lists compare. (Not disputing OP's critique of WordPress dev and testing.)
• Tichy 15y ago
  What will they use instead?
• bialecki 15y ago
  On the WSIYWYG editor note, what are the CMS platforms out there that are much better (or just better)? I thought WP's was pretty good.
  • krogsgard 15y ago
    That's a good example of one of his points that's way off base. For one, WP is always trying to improve the WYSIWYG experience, but if you're not happy just look at all the alternatives available for free in the plugin repository http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tags/wysiwyg http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tags/wysiwyg - some with very high adoption and ratings. You could even integrate with markdown if you wanted http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tags/markdown http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tags/markdown - what other CMS has these kinds of options in the writing experience?
• wildmXranat 15y ago
  I'm too tired to climb on my open source high chair to scream it out loud, so I'll gently say: come again - what ? WordPress was, is and will remain a blog platform and not a CMS. It is open source, so if you have the balls to charge oodles of money for managing it, maybe you hire guys to fix the bugs yourself. It looks like it wasn't the right tool to base the business on.
• michaelpinto 15y ago
  What he never says in the article — and what I'd love to know - is what platform is he migrating his clients to? I also wonder if we've grown to expect too much from WordPress: It really started life as a blogging tool - the charm of it was that it wasn't a full fledged CMS.
• agentgt 15y ago
  I have worked in the Enterprise CMS field for most of my dev career. Its pretty much impossible to be "All things to All people" which seems to be the requirement for CMS these days. There seems to be dozen of CMS users: * Marketing (free form, reporting, link management) * Document Management users (structured, access management) * Store front aka E-Commerce (structured) * Simple Company Site (blog/wiki) What I routinely see is CMS' that try to solve all these problems. OR the CMS is basically just a platform/library which really doesn't help the end user. Part of this is what caused me to start http://snaphop.com http://snaphop.com which is a mobile campaign management (cms for marketeers) instead of the general mobile content management which has the same problems above except for mobile.
• earle 15y ago
  "WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog." --Wordpress.com RTFM.
• javadyan 15y ago
  Why would you want to use a blogging engine as a CMS?
• markoheijnen 15y ago
  I disagree with most of the content. WordPress is a great CMS and it can be used for it. I do advanced projects and it fits fine. The list of his hard truths isn't that hard. Some of them are just rare cases that most people even irritate at. The Admin UI doesn't get a redesign 2-3 times a year. There is a big difference between redesign and adjusting. Most of the buttons are still on the same place as in WordPress 2.8. They only got replaced or have different colors. Maybe they should create admin themes so you have the ability to hold down some versions. I think he and his team should stop complaining about things where they never tried to make it better. At least it doesn't stand in that post. I do think that WordPress can and should do a better job and I am do help a little bit with it. That was something they should do to. The complaint about a Beta product is just lame. It's a beta version. What can you expect. A lot of Beta version of other software do break things. This is just my point of view. If you dive into WordPress Core files you can find solution for problems you thought WordPress couldn't handle. Sometimes it can be little bit ugly code tho.
• xxiao 15y ago
  i stopped reading immediately when i saw CMS. you're using the wrong tool, that's it, don't cut your feet to fit in your favorite shoe. and save your time(and ours) to write this, it's just the wrong tool for CMS, and it's not wordpress's fault!
• scottschulthess 15y ago
  Wordpress can't please everyone. Stop bitching and write your own.
• barce 15y ago
  Goodbye Swiss army knife. Although you are great at opening wine bottles, cutting pieces of paper, cutting string and making notches in pieces of wood, you do not: 1. Allow me to kill deer. 2. If I had a dead deer, you do not allow me to cleanly gut it. 3. After gutting the deer, you also do not allow me to cook the deer. Goodbye Swiss Army knife. I'll miss you, but my clients who don't know how to use the right tool for the right situation won't. Mr. Gallagher clearly didn't know how to explain to his clients that there isn't a one size fits all solution and that you need to use many tools to get complex business tasks done.
• dasrecht 15y ago
  "If you get an Answer you don't like, probably you asked the wrong question" As someone stated in the comments. Wordpress isn't the solution to all. Mainly it's a blogging system with the possibilities to add some static content. Of course there are many plugins which enrich the wordpress expirience but a blogging system stays a blogging system at heart. If you speak words like * Document Management * Workflow Management or * Digital Asset Management It's most likely you misunderstood Wordpress and it's capabilities from begin. I personally use Wordpress for many purposes private and for professional work. But if the client's demands are to high i switch instantly to better suiting solutions (which does not mean that wordpress is bad but probably not suitable for all use-cases) which makes the client even happier. About selling the right thing: If you go to the customer and tell him "This one-shot solution will be Wordpress and you can do everything with it !" You already oversold it and probably you should speak with your business development guys ;) One point i agree is the release schedule, which creates quite a lot of work trying to stay up to date with every wordpress instance you have. But i never saw the so called "perfect solution" not in OpenSource and not in "I pay fricken lot money for licences"-Software. just my two cents
  • deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
• paul9290 15y ago
  What is a better CMS solution? I have client who is asking me to build a WordPress CMS, but after reading this I'd like to hear what the better and easier (to implement & use) alternatives are.
  • Rabidgremlin 15y ago
    Try http://www.silverstripe.org/ http://www.silverstripe.org/
  • whatusername 15y ago
    Does your client have a large team of people who will be editing this CMS? Things like workflow management are essential if you're running sites like: http://technet.microsoft.com http://technet.microsoft.com or http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ Not so much the website/blog of a startup of 10 people. For that kind of use-case -- Wordpress is awesome.
• noonespecial 15y ago
  I know this is a rant, but I get tired of companies with $750k worth of "department heads" and "managers of x" all balanced on re-purposed open source software that was never meant to do what they're trying to do. Listen: fire a pair of "department heads", hire a pair of very good coders from the community surrounding the project you're trying to use and make the changes you want. Bonus points for giving back those changes to the project when you're done. Bitching that the free software you tried to perch your business on isn't meeting your needs is just bad form.
  • wmeredith 15y ago
    I agree. My agency has developed and hosts about 40 WordPress sites for corporate, NPO and start up type businesses. They range from hundreds of pages of complex e-commerce to actual blogs and micro-sites. We have serious PHP devs in house and we write and maintain our own plugins that do everything from talk to Facebook and Twitter to create Google maps and manage complex event registration and payment forms. We also contribute to the core. WordPress is the best choice for our clients, because it's easy for them to use, FULL STOP. Enhancing that great UX with our own sauce is hard work, but it pays of for them in the day-to-day and for us in the long run. (Referrals and repeat business.) The OP may have left the building, but WordPress is sticking around for a long time.
• redthrowaway 15y ago
  What's with the current trend of using 18pt font for body in blogs? It's unreadable. Choose a more reasonable font and make the margins bigger.
• posabsolute 15y ago
  Ranting much? wordpress is good at 2 things, blogs and simple websites, it always been good at that (and will probably stay the easiest solution for that) His company requirements outgrew Wordpress, its how you can resume that big article.. I also don't understand his 'windows' problems? I guess he is talking about ie7 and less, and well in a beta you can expect problems with legacy. Your a real wp dev? well you know where to draw the line where wordpress becomes a drag, and act consequently, that does not mean removing it entirely from your stack, that just mean using something more custom when the situation arise. I'm sorry but 3/4 of the world web agencies can't create a better user experience as far as the administration panel is concern.. It's the best bang for buck for simple content and blog websites. Maybe this guy just got the wrong people around him too..
• jakejake 15y ago
  The beauty of WordPress to me is that you can install it for just about anybody and they pick it up right away. Te plugin ecosystem is fantastic for specialized functionality. I don't really agree with the OP that all of the workflow functionality belongs in the core. If he thinks this is something a lot of users want, why doesn't he write a plugin? If he's right (and maybe he is..?) then it would be a huge hit. If more hooks are needed to allow plugin developers to implement these things and make WordPress more competitive with enterprise CMS systems, I would support that. But I would not support adding a bunch of complexity to the core.
• lux 15y ago
  I'm mainly tired of helping friends and clients fix Wordpress security breaches. That's why I've been working on a clean php5.3+ alternative: http://www.elefantcms.com/ http://www.elefantcms.com/
  • rickmb 15y ago
    I usually try to be respectful of anybody making the effort of publishing open source code, but I'm getting pretty tired of you spamming your CMS everywhere I look. Especially since it is made up of exactly the same kind of procedural spaghetti that makes WordPress such a joy to work with... "clean php5.3+" my ass.
    • lux 15y ago
      Just because I'm not using PSR-0 in my core (which has its issues, not the least of which is unnecessary verbosity, esp. for core classes in a framework), doesn't mean my code is spaghetti. And I'm not spamming when I contribute an anecdote or other information to a discussion, or when I post a request for feedback on r/php. Startups come to HN to post their launches and updates all the time and it's not spam. Go look at the front page right now and count the number of open source projects making announcements. I've made exactly one story submission to HN about my project, and I've mentioned it while contributing to a discussion a total of four times in six months.
  • lux 15y ago
    Why the downvote? I'm not exaggerating, I've seen several Wordpress sites hacked in the past few months, one of them several times (after they reinstalled and updated from scratch too). I know it's a target because it's popular, but it also has a long track record of security issues, and isn't particularly well written code... On the other hand, alternatives like Drupal are just too complicated for users, which leads to them simply not keeping their sites updated. So I'm building an alternative that focuses on minimalism, so it's lightweight and fast, and easy because it's uncluttered. Obviously I have a long way to go in terms of supporting the plethora of plugins Wordpress users enjoy, but I've got a solid showing already for being a 6-month-old project. I've been implementing CMSes for about 12 years now, from newspaper and university sites to simple ma & pa sites, so I've personally made all of the mistakes you can make and learned what does and doesn't work. So I don't mean to just disparage Wordpress, but it's a platform that's been stretched far beyond its central purpase and it shows, and I think an alternative is due.
• gregbair 15y ago
  Repeat after me: Wordpress is not a CMS. It's a blogging engine.
• joshu 15y ago
  I still think we need to split up hosting, editing, etc: http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/12/blogging-tools.html http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/12/blogging-tools.html
• kevinjohn 15y ago
  Hello everyone, I'm Kevinjohn Gallagher, the author of the post. While I really appreciate all the comments, quite a few folks here have made presumptions that are really wide of the mark. I love WordPress. I use it for my personal site, and thats not going to change. WordPress is very good at what it does, and Im in no way down on it for that; its just that the needs of my small company is now very different that the options WordPress gives us. There's no real drama there. What has driven this decision though, is that sites that could/should/have-already been running nicely on WordPress have really been let down by a number of changes in the 3 releases in the last year. We deal with a lot of smaller government and charity websites - which don't pay well - and they simply can't handle the AdminUI changing every 16 weeks. To us techies thats a long time, to your average "Joe Public", thats quite a lot. Given that most of these people have really strict usage requirements (colour blind, no use of mouse, etc) the new WordPress 3.3 AdminUI is shockingly inaccessible. So much of the change involved in the WordPress product is horribly unmanaged. And thats ok, it's free software. For our small company, this doesn't work for us anymore, so we move on. I wrote the post on my personal website, simply as a marker, to give myself closure more than anything. I'm not really sure how or why thats offended so many of you, but I'm more than happy to talk it through over e-mail ;) Thanks, Kevinjohn ========= We're a 5 person company, with 2-4 freelancers as needed. We're definitely not some $750k a website agency as someone mentioned. Heck thats more than double our turnover for the year!
  • jacques_chester 15y ago
    > So much of the change involved in the WordPress product is horribly unmanaged. As the volunteer admin of a small blog network, I cannot agree more. Having to upgrade whole versions just to get a security fix is terrible practice, but I'm forced to do it.
    • joelhaus 15y ago
      Agreed, my highly customized installs are occasionally broken by the upgrades, so I was really happy find this plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/hotfix/ http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/hotfix/ However, it's often a band-aid that isn't big enough for the wound.
• alwillis 15y ago
  I guess someone should tell TechCrunch, BoingBoing, GigaOM and the rest of the large sites on WordPress to stop using WordPress, because it's not a CMS, or so we're being told. What people don't seem to get that WordPress has been morphing from "just" a blogging platform to a CMS ever since 3.0 shipped. It'll just be a matter of time before most of the legacy stuff is gone and we'll have a CMS that can do blogging instead of the other way around.
  • RandallBrown 15y ago
    TechCrunch, BoingBoing, and GigaOM are blogs though. That is specifically what WordPress is designed for. Sure, you can use WordPress as a pretty good CMS, but there are going to be cases that WordPress chooses not to handle. Some of those cases seem to be what this guy needs in his site, so he's not using WordPress. That's it.
    • alwillis 15y ago
      It's hard to say that TechCrunch is just a blog now; it's complex site with millions of pages views that probably uses lots of the CMS features of WordPress.
      • waitwhat 15y ago
        While it's true that TechCrunch-the-brand isn't just a blog now (it's an event! it's awards! it's an investor! it's InternetDrama!), www.techcrunch.com-the-website really is just a blog. A big blog admittedly, but still a blog. And unless I'm missing something, www.techcrunch.com isn't even a complex site: blog posts in the left-hand column followed by comments, a smattering of basic widgets in the right-hand column, and ... uh ... that's it?
  • dextorious 15y ago
    "X is not Y" "Please someone inform Z (people/companies that abuse X as Y or even use it as K<<Y)" Doesn't look that smart this way, now, does it?
• mladenkovacevic 15y ago
  I don't get what kind of business goes out recommending WordPress to a bunch of clients as a CMS platform to begin with. I always thought WordPress was a quick yet flexible blogging tool for a one-to-five-man team who doesn't want to get into serious development but just needs to get some content out there. In that regard WordPress does the job more than adequately. He cites department heads and account managers giving him shit over how this or that doesn't work. If they've all been getting a paycheck out of a free blogging engine until now then it sure as hell seemed to have served their business well. Throwing together a quick blog in WordPress is something you do for a computer illiterate aunt who wants to write about her recipes.. probably not something you'd want to build an entire business on.
  • alwillis 15y ago
    A business like TechCrunch, that was acquired by AOL last year?
    • mladenkovacevic 15y ago
      TechCrunch produces content and as such I'm sure they were well served by WordPress. The OP's company is in the business of selling WordPress-based solutions and that to me seems like a shaky business at best. In another post the OP clarified himself in saying that they are not a large business and mostly work with non-profit and small organization without a large development budget so I guess now his write-up makes more sense. But perhaps instead of ragging on WordPress for not being something they were hoping it to be, they should be thanking the authors of WordPress for for creating a tool and releasing it free of charge allowing the OP's company to stay in business for this long.
• Johnyma22 15y ago
  We're currently working on Etherpad Lite into Wordpress which addresses some of his issues.
• boopboop 15y ago
  I have used Wordpress extensively for any dozens of websites. "The straw the that broke the camel’s back? My Account Manager: How can we claim that [WordPress] is the CMS for our clients, when you need the capability to edit ANY content on the website simply to mark a comment as spam?" 1) That generally makes sense. You need the ability to edit content in order to edit content (in this case, comments). 2) I have never had a client require a user account which can edit comments but not edit content. This is an extreme edge case. Wordpress has exploded in popularity largely because of its ease of use. When you start to build a system which incorporates every possible feature to please every user, it will start to suck. If you have a requirement that is not served with Wordpress (1) built it as a plugin or (2) use another system like Drupal. It is that simple.
  • waitwhat 15y ago
    I have never had a client require a user account which can edit comments but not edit content. This is an extreme edge case. Actually, that's a moderator.
• ggwicz 15y ago
  All the things he listed that WordPress doesn't have are the reasons why I like it. With the exception of better caching/CDN integration, I like that WordPress is simple, straightforward, and super hackable with plugins and theme functions. A lot of people don't even know all the capabilities. Few know about the WP Transients capabilities, for example. They're quite powerful and useful.
  • pestaa 15y ago
    Transients API is exactly what I've been looking for, thank you. The WordPress Codex is not really in a good shape I think.
    • ggwicz 15y ago
      Glad I could help out. The Codex is in great shape, I think they just have to prioritize their time and they don't have huge human resources to focus on everything. Focusing on the Thumbnails section, for instance, might serve more people than the Transients API. But the Transients stuff is pretty neat and there are other little hooks and functions that really do a lot :)
• eulo 15y ago
  So much wrong with this article, this guy doesn't know Wordpress. l2 hack
• donbronson 15y ago
  i find it ironic that the site complaining about wordpress is still powered by wordpress
• ereckers 15y ago
  He'll be back. Why? Because building and maintaining the alternative that he's asking for and had failed to mention is hard. Looking at his blogging history I see a shit ton of it revolves around WordPress, which I'm assuming roughly matches up with the client work dedicated to WordPress. I'm looking forward to the followup post.
• justindocanto 15y ago
  I try to write constructive replies to posts like this... but you sir, are an idiot. I wish I could down vote this. I've used 9/10 CMS's in the market right now, and although there are the occasional mishaps, it's still the best CMS regardless. Some will say it's only a blogging engine, but it has enough functionality, when used correctly, to battle most CMS systems. Especially with it being free... you have absolutely no room to complain.
• odddogmedia 15y ago
  I work at a firm that employs WordPress to build simple B2B and B2C websites. We share many of the same opinions as this author, and even more shortcomings come to mind: 1) Unable to change content types 2) Funneled into the "Blog" post type, which is simply called "Posts", with no easy way to kill this off and create your own 3) User group management The list could go on forever. However, if the shoe doesn't fit, why force it? Did the author ever consider using (or building) a CMS that fit the needs of the project? Also, it's an open source piece of software. Why not contribute some time yourself and fix the problem related to moderate_comments (http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4802 http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4802)? Other than that, this post is a bit infuriating as it lacks background as well as a solution. Thanks for letting us know you'll no longer choose WordPress as your (seemingly only) choice of CMS. And thanks for not providing one ounce of helpful insight for how to improve the problem or what the alternatives are.
  • boopboop 15y ago
    "Unable to change content types 2) Funneled into the "Blog" post type, which is simply called "Posts", with no easy way to kill this off and create your own.." I do not understand. Wordpress can certainly use custom content types.
  • Jem 15y ago
    > 1) Unable to change content types 2) Funneled into the "Blog" post type, which is simply called "Posts", with no easy way to kill this off and create your own http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/register_post_type http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/register_post_... ?
    • odddogmedia 15y ago
      Try creating a custom post type and adding a handful of posts to it. Now try moving those posts to a different post type. Not so easy, now is it?
• rafski 15y ago
  Plugins often cause more problems than they solve. I had way too many situations where a plugin would break after a WordPress update and the author wouldn't support it anymore. Also, there are malicious plugins on WordPress.org with no direct way to submit report or post a warning. Can you imagine a FaceBook widget that after a while of use starts to promote some rogue site?
• CubicleNinjas 15y ago
  WordPress has all of the things listed if you use a plugin. You just have to do a search. If the inability to moderate a comment is your biggest argument against a system, then I look forward to the follow-up post in six months when you truly try to implement any of the other "major CMS'". Many people here are mentioning that this isn't what WordPress was built for – and this is true. But WP can be used amazingly well for any style of site. The fact is it has a hockey stick curve of usage because it does make a wonderful web backend. My biggest curiosity is Drupal. After implementing it for major clients, managing it for major clients, and working with many developers who swear by it, I've never seen it work well for user or admin. It just seems so terrifyingly inbred.
• skeptical 15y ago
  Really? Did he really expect wordpress would ship those specific features out of the box? Come on. That is not even a mater of feature richness, it's simply keeping it bloat free to some extent. I can agree with him on things like lack of a fancy wysiwyg, but workflows? Multi side admin? Pay someone to implement that for you if you don't want to do it yourself. There are more important issues with wordpres that should be solved: built in support for syntax highlight, a fancier javascript image gallery browser, etc. A simpler more effective plugin system (current one is an unmitigated mess). Others cool stuff have been added lately such as drag and drop uploads. This guy is expecting to have someone coding a custom software for him just because it's available with GPL license. Non-sense.
• ricardobeat 15y ago
  Come on folks, Wordpress is a CMS. It manages content, and has more features than half the other CMSs. At this point the blogging setup that comes by default is just built on top of general abstractions. I've used it for plenty of projects, and IMO there are two things holding it back: the violent release cycle (frequent UI changes, out-of-date plugins, mandatory major upgrades) and the shitty performance (a standard install gets barely a single request/second on a common shared box, for a content-rich page - file based caching doesn't help much). On the other side it's the most flexible, easy to customize and pleasant to use CMS out there. It's a shame, really.
• hippich 15y ago
  Having quite a lot of experience with clients wanting to build next social network, yelp, online store using word press, I wrote article "Why Wordpress is Bad" - http://www.yepcorp.com/blogs/pavel-karoukin/why-wordpress-bad.html http://www.yepcorp.com/blogs/pavel-karoukin/why-wordpress-ba... a while ago. tl;dr; Wordpress is great for a blog. I think they put a lot of effort to make UI perfect for single user blog. And it is easy to install. But what happens next - people try to do something with wordpress it not supposed to do. And that's where problems start comming.
• nikcub 15y ago
  can someone please clarify what you mean by these points? * document management (I assume more like an enterprise CMS) * link management (outbound links on posts? detect 404s?) * publishing options * 'application'
• semuelf 15y ago
  How about the old competitor: Movable Type? - Document management: have revision system - Workflow management: each entry can be draft, published, or scheduled - Digital asset management: included - Link management: no - User management: powerful - ESI Caching / CDN ability: no - WYSIWYG editing: exists - Single Sign-on: of course - Multi-side Admin: of course - Publishing options: static, dynamic and more - Access Management: of course - Application - ? - Multi-lingual: English, Japanese, France, Spanish and German. (IIRC) Disclaimer: I'm in the core team Edit: reply point-by-point
• kitsune_ 15y ago
  All content management systems suck. Why? Because no size fits all. At least that's the conclusion I draw after having worked with WP, EE, Drupal, Joomla, Typo3, DotNetNuke, Umbraco, OpenText, Plone, Orchard, OpenText etc.. At one point most projects will hit a wall where the demands outgrow the constraints of the framework. So, if you're lucky, your framework will end up being somewhat flexible. Stability and good testing practices are also important and often neglected.
• ullrich 15y ago
  Is this blog post about moving away from wordpress? I can't tell because if so, the new blog seems to be down.
• danzigism 15y ago
  Man what a surprising bunch of uneducated crap I've been reading. Have any of you heavy criticizers installed it, learned how to develop themes, and gain a complete and full understanding of the WP core and the incredibly impressive Codex with a bajillion helpful functions at your disposal? I've developed customized WP sites for things like realtors, business directories, news sites, restaurants, online stores, local governments, and quite a few small/medium sized businesses. The only way to use WP to it's full advantage is to first of all, take advantage of custom post types and taxonomies. Organize your content. Also, you need to customize the backend so you're only allowing you client to see certain information. There are great plugins available such as Adminimize, and the User Role Editor for properly assigning permissions to your user roles. As far as security is concerned, this obviously depends on the administrator. Simple things such as not using "admin" as the administrator, and NOT using wp-admin as your path for the backend, proper file permissions on the WP installation dir, etc, are all simple practices. To say WP is just blogging software obviously means you haven't been paying attention for the past 3 years.
• boopboop 15y ago
  > "Additionally this causes immense trouble for our clients and users who WordPress consider to be “edge cases”, that they no longer cater for. That covers disabled users, colour blind users, those not using a mouse.." Most every other CMS would not be suitable for disabled users, colour blind users, those not using a mouse.. (unfortunately). > "those not using a desktop PC" Wordpress had a pretty nice official mobile interface. > "those using a microsoft browser, especially those using IE6 or IE7" IE6 is not supported by most website. Facebook recently stopped supporting IE7. IE8+ works fine. > "(Bluntly, if you’re not using a Mac, look out)." There is no basis for this comment. I am not sure why we are giving this author this much attention.