3 ms·

I feel like the solution to wordpress-the-org being mismanaged is not to build better replacement infra around wordpress, but to build better publishing tools t

by sneak 2y ago

I feel like the solution to wordpress-the-org being mismanaged is not to build better replacement infra around wordpress, but to build better publishing tools that don’t burn a mysql connection and require php get executed on every pageview.

jzb 2y ago
WordPress has literally millions of Web sites in production, tons of add-on software, and an ecosystem of companies and people providing solutions for it. Suggesting that the solution is "well, just start from scratch with something else" is unlikely to get you very far. It is far easier and more likely that the community around WordPress would rally around replacing WP.org than starting over from scratch with a new toolkit. Some people might flee WP altogether, but the majority of people and companies just want to get things done - not seeing them having a lot of tolerance for or interest in having to start again from square one.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >Suggesting that the solution is "well, just start from scratch with something else" is unlikely to get you very far. To be fair, the first and best solution most people in these parts have is "Fork it, I'm going to make my own Linux distro." or something along those lines. No, they don't get very far but I will credit their consistency.
- neya 2y ago
  Bad software gets popularised all the time, there is nothing wrong with having alternatives and having more choices. I strongly think we need some good alternatives to Wordpress, as someone who has been in the publishing industry in the last decade. Also, Wordpress doesn't scale well (without getting expensive), the code is bad, it is poorly managed, security issues are all over the place. It's about time we got some alternatives.
  - etchalon 2y ago
    There are already an unfathomable number of WordPress alternatives.
    - BoredPositron 2y ago
      ...but they are all doing it wrong just wait until I publish my new and better version now enhanced with the new xyz buzzword. /s There is no reasoning with people like this.
cloudking 2y ago
There was an effort made and it was acquired by Automattic https://frontity.org/ https://frontity.org/
slyall 2y ago
No impossible but hard work. I guess you MVP would be something that could do simple brochure websites and be easy to extend. Design it so it is easy to install for individuals or web hosting companies. Maybe plan ahead for things like multi-site, blogging, eCommerce. etc With all the competition and even the MVP is going to be a lot of work, especially since the average user won't be very technical.
walterbell 2y ago
> publishing tools that don't burn a mysql connection and require php get executed on every pageview. Has anyone tried to use Wordpress as a static site generator, with a few dynamic-content functions moved to Javascript against an API for alternative open-source server (or even another Wordpress instance)?
that_guy_iain 2y ago
I think it’s forking Wordpress to get rid of the madman who is bdfl while not being actually being benevolent. Who is he going to target next, development agencies?
- thdespou 2y ago
  I would ask his mom first.
dmje 2y ago
The solution to wordpress-the-org being mismanaged is to sort out the org management.
safety1st 2y ago
Amazingly stupid take. Sorry to be blunt but I'm so tired of seeing these. Every thread about WordPress on Hacker News devolves into someone who obviously doesn't work extensively with WordPress, ranting about how bad the code of WordPress is. So this is the year 2024, and something amazing called a CDN has been invented. PHP does not get executed on every pageview, nor does a Mariadb connection get burned. If you are building a website or web application at scale with any framework or platform, a big part of your job is to architect it such that everything which can be cached, is. You may also employ tools like Varnish or transients. The underlying design principles are universal and whether you're building on top of WordPress or something else doesn't matter that much - in fact many experienced WordPress developers are accustomed to serving multiple millions or tens of millions of users per month, so the ways for making this work are pretty mature.
- sneak 2y ago
  You just described a bunch of tools that you have to deploy around Wordpress to work around its myriad deficiencies and inefficiencies. I’ve worked extensively with Wordpress; that’s precisely why I hate it so much. It needs to die. The proper solution, 20 years from now, will not descend from this branch.
  - thdespou 2y ago
    Show me a production website that does not use things like Caching, CDN's to serve static content or other optimizations to enhance performance It's the same as any other public facing service. I don't know what you are yapping about.
    - safety1st 2y ago
      Thank you, was going to say this but you beat me to it. What type of web development is this guy using that he considers using a CDN a no-go? Mind you when I made my original statement I had in mind websites that handle millions of monthly uniques and are somewhat dynamic in terms of the content they publish - for smaller scales WP needs basically nothing else and just works, but this scenario is really quite easy with WP if you employ common caching strategies, and is probably impossible with the typical "I wrote this script that generates static HTML last weekend and therefore it's a revolution in CMSes" solution
kijin 2y ago
What's wrong with opening a MySQL connection on every page view? Unlike PostgreSQL, MySQL was specifically designed to handle a very large number of short-lived connections. A properly configured MySQL daemon can handle tens of thousands of connections per second. If you're still opening and closing too many connections for that, MySQL supports using Unix domain sockets instead of TCP, and PHP supports persistent connections -- a sort of ad hoc connection pooling system. There are many issues with WordPress and its ecosystem, for sure, but database connection handling isn't one.

by sneak 2y ago

jzb 2y ago

WordPress has literally millions of Web sites in production, tons of add-on software, and an ecosystem of companies and people providing solutions for it. Suggesting that the solution is "well, just start from scratch with something else" is unlikely to get you very far. It is far easier and more likely that the community around WordPress would rally around replacing WP.org than starting over from scratch with a new toolkit. Some people might flee WP altogether, but the majority of people and companies just want to get things done - not seeing them having a lot of tolerance for or interest in having to start again from square one.

Dalewyn 2y ago
>Suggesting that the solution is "well, just start from scratch with something else" is unlikely to get you very far. To be fair, the first and best solution most people in these parts have is "Fork it, I'm going to make my own Linux distro." or something along those lines. No, they don't get very far but I will credit their consistency.
neya 2y ago
Bad software gets popularised all the time, there is nothing wrong with having alternatives and having more choices. I strongly think we need some good alternatives to Wordpress, as someone who has been in the publishing industry in the last decade. Also, Wordpress doesn't scale well (without getting expensive), the code is bad, it is poorly managed, security issues are all over the place. It's about time we got some alternatives.
- etchalon 2y ago
  There are already an unfathomable number of WordPress alternatives.
  - BoredPositron 2y ago
    ...but they are all doing it wrong just wait until I publish my new and better version now enhanced with the new xyz buzzword. /s There is no reasoning with people like this.

cloudking 2y ago

There was an effort made and it was acquired by Automattic https://frontity.org/ https://frontity.org/

slyall 2y ago

No impossible but hard work. I guess you MVP would be something that could do simple brochure websites and be easy to extend. Design it so it is easy to install for individuals or web hosting companies. Maybe plan ahead for things like multi-site, blogging, eCommerce. etc With all the competition and even the MVP is going to be a lot of work, especially since the average user won't be very technical.

walterbell 2y ago

> publishing tools that don't burn a mysql connection and require php get executed on every pageview. Has anyone tried to use Wordpress as a static site generator, with a few dynamic-content functions moved to Javascript against an API for alternative open-source server (or even another Wordpress instance)?

that_guy_iain 2y ago

I think it’s forking Wordpress to get rid of the madman who is bdfl while not being actually being benevolent. Who is he going to target next, development agencies?

thdespou 2y ago
I would ask his mom first.

dmje 2y ago

The solution to wordpress-the-org being mismanaged is to sort out the org management.

safety1st 2y ago

Amazingly stupid take. Sorry to be blunt but I'm so tired of seeing these. Every thread about WordPress on Hacker News devolves into someone who obviously doesn't work extensively with WordPress, ranting about how bad the code of WordPress is. So this is the year 2024, and something amazing called a CDN has been invented. PHP does not get executed on every pageview, nor does a Mariadb connection get burned. If you are building a website or web application at scale with any framework or platform, a big part of your job is to architect it such that everything which can be cached, is. You may also employ tools like Varnish or transients. The underlying design principles are universal and whether you're building on top of WordPress or something else doesn't matter that much - in fact many experienced WordPress developers are accustomed to serving multiple millions or tens of millions of users per month, so the ways for making this work are pretty mature.

sneak 2y ago
You just described a bunch of tools that you have to deploy around Wordpress to work around its myriad deficiencies and inefficiencies. I’ve worked extensively with Wordpress; that’s precisely why I hate it so much. It needs to die. The proper solution, 20 years from now, will not descend from this branch.
- thdespou 2y ago
  Show me a production website that does not use things like Caching, CDN's to serve static content or other optimizations to enhance performance It's the same as any other public facing service. I don't know what you are yapping about.
  - safety1st 2y ago
    Thank you, was going to say this but you beat me to it. What type of web development is this guy using that he considers using a CDN a no-go? Mind you when I made my original statement I had in mind websites that handle millions of monthly uniques and are somewhat dynamic in terms of the content they publish - for smaller scales WP needs basically nothing else and just works, but this scenario is really quite easy with WP if you employ common caching strategies, and is probably impossible with the typical "I wrote this script that generates static HTML last weekend and therefore it's a revolution in CMSes" solution

kijin 2y ago

What's wrong with opening a MySQL connection on every page view? Unlike PostgreSQL, MySQL was specifically designed to handle a very large number of short-lived connections. A properly configured MySQL daemon can handle tens of thousands of connections per second. If you're still opening and closing too many connections for that, MySQL supports using Unix domain sockets instead of TCP, and PHP supports persistent connections -- a sort of ad hoc connection pooling system. There are many issues with WordPress and its ecosystem, for sure, but database connection handling isn't one.