5 ms·

I don't think it's the code that makes WordPress valuable. I've been learning WordPress recently and haven't been too impressed with the internals. WordPress is

I don't think it's the code that makes WordPress valuable. I've been learning WordPress recently and haven't been too impressed with the internals. WordPress is valuable because of the ecosystem and support. I have no doubt that WordPress will still be a thing in ten years. What's the support plan for EmDash? I see commits are mostly from a single developer. E: Oh, I think it's an April fools joke, I'm embarrassed. E2: Apparently not a joke.

gbibas 6mo ago
[flagged]
- jimnotgym 6mo ago
  I did that once, employed someone on Fiverr to do a WordPress site. They installed a load of plugins for no reason, made a mess, then gave me my money back. I went back to a static site. That has been my experience, low barrier to entry, low price, shoddy work. Or hire an agency, pay top dollar for little work.
  - gbibas 6mo ago
    Ha, yeah that's the other side of it — low barrier to entry cuts both ways. The WordPress talent pool is huge but unfiltered. Still, the fact that pool exists at all is what keeps WordPress dominant. Nobody's hiring Fiverr gigs to customize an EmDash site yet.
hatmanstack 6mo ago
There might be pie on your face but they stole my line, https://github.com/HatmanStack/kill-wordpress https://github.com/HatmanStack/kill-wordpress
- 8organicbits 6mo ago
  I think you need to account for the base rate. There's a lot of WordPress plugin vulnerability disclosures because there's a lot of WordPress plugins and there are enough deployments of the plugins to make searching for those vulnerabilities is worthwhile. That site warns that WordPress plugins can be abandoned, but that's clearly not a WordPress specific issue. Sure some site could use SSG, but that's a different design. I certainly don't want to claim WordPress security is good, but I'm not sure that site is measuring anything meaningful.
  - hatmanstack 6mo ago
    Just measured your visit, zing.
thisislife2 6mo ago
There's always https://textpattern.com/ https://textpattern.com/ which is also as old as Wordpress (older?) and better coded. (See also thttps://textpattern.org/ https://textpattern.org/ ).
- zdragnar 6mo ago
  It stores plugins as strings in the database, then pulls those strings back and evals them as PHP on requests. "Better coded" is very much a subjective assessment.
  - jditu 6mo ago
    [dead]
  - BodyCulture 6mo ago
    Thank you very much for sharing your research results! I really appreciate your work and even more that you took time and risk exposing your findings, I wish more people did this.
kbdot 6mo ago
Cloudflare doesn't do April fools jokes. In fact, 1.1.1.1 was released on April 1st back in 2018 and now it's one of the most used DNS service in the world.
- benatkin 6mo ago
  It's a legit April Fools'. On the initial commit: > Some content is hidden > Large Commits have some content hidden by default. Use the searchbox below for content that may be hidden. This for "a spiritual successor to WordPress".
  - a57721 6mo ago
    Isn't it normal for the initial commit to be large?
    - benatkin 6mo ago
      A little larger, a lot of the time, though I like a small initial commit better. Though just a little larger. Not so large that it is too large to show on a GitHub page. That means not using version control properly.
      - Zanfa 6mo ago
        > Not so large that it is too large to show on a GitHub page. Maybe not applicable in this case, but Github has a ridiculously low threshold for when it starts hiding diffs. Probably a limitation of their new React frontend.
      - a57721 6mo ago
        Usually when someone decides to share code with the world, they don't want to publish the actual development history. They publish the first version that is ready to go public as the first commit. With enough functionality etc.
- mygooch 6mo ago
  [dead]
calvinmorrison 6mo ago
wordpress is valuable because it allows very bad developers / marketing people to write very bad code and get away with it, driving extremely low cost solutions for clients who are cost concious. yes you want a global db handle sure ya lets delete all tables woohoo
- busterarm 6mo ago
  > wordpress is valuable because it allows very bad developers / marketing people to write very bad code and get away with it, driving extremely low cost solutions for clients who are cost concious. You've sort of nailed it, but this isn't a bad thing. An alternative for these customers does not exist. There's another vertical which is organizations that have armies of writers churning out content. Any kind of publisher or advertiser, basically. There is no better CMS for this. Large organizations like NYT, etc chose to write their own.
  - calvinmorrison 6mo ago
    yep. we like it because with shopify or other platforms, you run into limitations. with Wordpress I can literally just whip it into whatever shape i want.
  - sp1nningaway 6mo ago
    >> wordpress is valuable because it allows very bad developers / marketing people to write very bad code and get away with it, driving extremely low cost solutions for clients who are cost concious. > You've sort of nailed it, but this isn't a bad thing. An alternative for these customers does not exist. Yes! I'm locked into WordPress, which I hate, because it's the only platform that will allow a non-developer to maintain it if I get hit by a bus.
    - busterarm 6mo ago
      Which also allows you to not be on call 24/7. A decade ago I had to learn and run WordPress for a job. I held my nose up the stink was so bad. But quickly I learned how to manage it and have modern sensible practices around it and I've probably gotten more real value out of it than any other CMS or web framework I've touched. That includes Rails. Thankfully I don't have to do that anymore, but you can sanely and safely run WordPress today and there's zero shame in it.
Robdel12 6mo ago
Hm, you might want to catch up on the Wordpress “open source” drama with WP.com vs .org, WP engine and Matt.
jgrahamc 6mo ago
I can assure you this is not an April Fools. Cloudflare does not do that. This is a real project.
- reaperducer 6mo ago
  I can assure you this is not an April Fools. Cloudflare does not do that. It should. I miss the days when tech was interesting and fun. Even Steve Jobs, for all his later-day revisionist hard-assed reputation, enjoyed the occasional Easter egg, inside joke, or April Fool's joke.
  - alsetmusic 6mo ago
    I hated that shit. I'd load Slashdot and there was no real content or it was difficult to find real news amongst all the crap. It's not funny. It's annoying.
    - reaperducer 6mo ago
      I feel bad for you. That's a lot of anger over virtually nothing.
      - alsetmusic 6mo ago
        Would you be annoyed if HN went offline just for the hell of it for a day every year? But you're right, I was an extremely angry person back then. Many years of therapy and deliberate ongoing work and I'm a radically different man. Thank goodness I got to the other side.
        reaperducer 6mo ago
        Would you be annoyed if HN went offline just for the hell of it for a day every year? No. Not even a little. HN is not food. HN is not water. HN is not my family or my job or in any way vital to my life. It's an amusement. A diversion. I am not a FOMO victim.
    - 6mo ago
codeulike 6mo ago
Its impressive work from CF that lots of people in this thread are unsure whether its a joke or not, like a delicately balanced april fools for the hn crowd
reddalo 6mo ago
Oh, come on. It must be a joke. They can't be serious with this sloppy thing.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]

gbibas 6mo ago

[flagged]

jimnotgym 6mo ago
I did that once, employed someone on Fiverr to do a WordPress site. They installed a load of plugins for no reason, made a mess, then gave me my money back. I went back to a static site. That has been my experience, low barrier to entry, low price, shoddy work. Or hire an agency, pay top dollar for little work.
- gbibas 6mo ago
  Ha, yeah that's the other side of it — low barrier to entry cuts both ways. The WordPress talent pool is huge but unfiltered. Still, the fact that pool exists at all is what keeps WordPress dominant. Nobody's hiring Fiverr gigs to customize an EmDash site yet.

hatmanstack 6mo ago

There might be pie on your face but they stole my line, https://github.com/HatmanStack/kill-wordpress https://github.com/HatmanStack/kill-wordpress

8organicbits 6mo ago
I think you need to account for the base rate. There's a lot of WordPress plugin vulnerability disclosures because there's a lot of WordPress plugins and there are enough deployments of the plugins to make searching for those vulnerabilities is worthwhile. That site warns that WordPress plugins can be abandoned, but that's clearly not a WordPress specific issue. Sure some site could use SSG, but that's a different design. I certainly don't want to claim WordPress security is good, but I'm not sure that site is measuring anything meaningful.
- hatmanstack 6mo ago
  Just measured your visit, zing.

thisislife2 6mo ago

There's always https://textpattern.com/ https://textpattern.com/ which is also as old as Wordpress (older?) and better coded. (See also thttps://textpattern.org/ https://textpattern.org/ ).

zdragnar 6mo ago
It stores plugins as strings in the database, then pulls those strings back and evals them as PHP on requests. "Better coded" is very much a subjective assessment.
- jditu 6mo ago
  [dead]
- BodyCulture 6mo ago
  Thank you very much for sharing your research results! I really appreciate your work and even more that you took time and risk exposing your findings, I wish more people did this.

kbdot 6mo ago

Cloudflare doesn't do April fools jokes. In fact, 1.1.1.1 was released on April 1st back in 2018 and now it's one of the most used DNS service in the world.

benatkin 6mo ago
It's a legit April Fools'. On the initial commit: > Some content is hidden > Large Commits have some content hidden by default. Use the searchbox below for content that may be hidden. This for "a spiritual successor to WordPress".
- a57721 6mo ago
  Isn't it normal for the initial commit to be large?
  - benatkin 6mo ago
    A little larger, a lot of the time, though I like a small initial commit better. Though just a little larger. Not so large that it is too large to show on a GitHub page. That means not using version control properly.
    - Zanfa 6mo ago
      > Not so large that it is too large to show on a GitHub page. Maybe not applicable in this case, but Github has a ridiculously low threshold for when it starts hiding diffs. Probably a limitation of their new React frontend.
    - a57721 6mo ago
      Usually when someone decides to share code with the world, they don't want to publish the actual development history. They publish the first version that is ready to go public as the first commit. With enough functionality etc.
mygooch 6mo ago
[dead]

calvinmorrison 6mo ago

wordpress is valuable because it allows very bad developers / marketing people to write very bad code and get away with it, driving extremely low cost solutions for clients who are cost concious. yes you want a global db handle sure ya lets delete all tables woohoo

busterarm 6mo ago
> wordpress is valuable because it allows very bad developers / marketing people to write very bad code and get away with it, driving extremely low cost solutions for clients who are cost concious. You've sort of nailed it, but this isn't a bad thing. An alternative for these customers does not exist. There's another vertical which is organizations that have armies of writers churning out content. Any kind of publisher or advertiser, basically. There is no better CMS for this. Large organizations like NYT, etc chose to write their own.
- calvinmorrison 6mo ago
  yep. we like it because with shopify or other platforms, you run into limitations. with Wordpress I can literally just whip it into whatever shape i want.
- sp1nningaway 6mo ago
  >> wordpress is valuable because it allows very bad developers / marketing people to write very bad code and get away with it, driving extremely low cost solutions for clients who are cost concious. > You've sort of nailed it, but this isn't a bad thing. An alternative for these customers does not exist. Yes! I'm locked into WordPress, which I hate, because it's the only platform that will allow a non-developer to maintain it if I get hit by a bus.
  - busterarm 6mo ago
    Which also allows you to not be on call 24/7. A decade ago I had to learn and run WordPress for a job. I held my nose up the stink was so bad. But quickly I learned how to manage it and have modern sensible practices around it and I've probably gotten more real value out of it than any other CMS or web framework I've touched. That includes Rails. Thankfully I don't have to do that anymore, but you can sanely and safely run WordPress today and there's zero shame in it.

Robdel12 6mo ago

Hm, you might want to catch up on the Wordpress “open source” drama with WP.com vs .org, WP engine and Matt.

jgrahamc 6mo ago

I can assure you this is not an April Fools. Cloudflare does not do that. This is a real project.

reaperducer 6mo ago
I can assure you this is not an April Fools. Cloudflare does not do that. It should. I miss the days when tech was interesting and fun. Even Steve Jobs, for all his later-day revisionist hard-assed reputation, enjoyed the occasional Easter egg, inside joke, or April Fool's joke.
- alsetmusic 6mo ago
  I hated that shit. I'd load Slashdot and there was no real content or it was difficult to find real news amongst all the crap. It's not funny. It's annoying.
  - reaperducer 6mo ago
    I feel bad for you. That's a lot of anger over virtually nothing.
    - alsetmusic 6mo ago
      Would you be annoyed if HN went offline just for the hell of it for a day every year? But you're right, I was an extremely angry person back then. Many years of therapy and deliberate ongoing work and I'm a radically different man. Thank goodness I got to the other side.
      - reaperducer 6mo ago
        Would you be annoyed if HN went offline just for the hell of it for a day every year? No. Not even a little. HN is not food. HN is not water. HN is not my family or my job or in any way vital to my life. It's an amusement. A diversion. I am not a FOMO victim.
  - 6mo ago

codeulike 6mo ago

Its impressive work from CF that lots of people in this thread are unsure whether its a joke or not, like a delicately balanced april fools for the hn crowd

reddalo 6mo ago

Oh, come on. It must be a joke. They can't be serious with this sloppy thing.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]