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Wordpress is successfull because it is easy to install and hosting is cheap. Furthermore the basic wordpress set has very little capabilities. (but they are 100
by camus 14y ago
Wordpress is successfull because it is easy to install and hosting is cheap. Furthermore the basic wordpress set has very little capabilities. (but they are 100% blogger oriented)
However wordpress is a pain to customize and extend, i always found drupal was easier to customize for non developpers ( you have to mess with php pretty fast with wordpress ). Drupal is on the contrary a little more complicated to setup , but the basic set up is more powerfull than wordpress ( and the plugin system is better ).
That's why i dont think non php scripts can be popular to non programmers. you can just drop some python or some ruby on a webserver and expect it to work just like php does,
And few shared hosting providers support mod_python or stuff like that ( which is the shame because i see no reason why mod_python is worse than mod_php and we would have a whole generation of better programmers if people used python over php).
- jacques_chester 14y agoTo clear up some confusion: > Wordpress won inter alia because ... "inter alia" is a short hand that roughly means "amongst other things, which I won't list here because it would obscure the point I am trying to make". "Amongst other things" is the literal translation.
- jvoorhis 14y agoPerhaps the Latin was counterproductive in this context.
- jacques_chester 14y agoBut it's such a handy shorthand :(
- AceJohnny2 14y agoyeah, but you're pushing the complexity away from the author and onto the reader who needs to decode it, and the readers don't like it ;)
- coldtea 14y agoIf you wanted a shortcut you could have tried Chinese. It would have taken only one or two characters as opposed to 10, and you would be using a living language with more speakers than latin (including people that only know latin quotations and a few generic phrases).
- jacques_chester 14y agoWhile if I was deciding what terms to choose ab initio from the universe of all possible words in all possible languages, my alibi here is that I studied law for a few years. Most of the phrases I picked up en route are mostly obiter dicta, et cetera, with only limited utility. Others are enormously useful; "inter alia" has escaped into other parts of academia. But while ceteris paribus it might be the case that I could use Chinese characters, English has a far greater de facto affinity to, and stock of, Latin due to the historical connection commencing in the 1066 Norman Conquest and the imposition of the lingua Franca.
- coldtea 14y ago>While if I was deciding what terms to choose ab initio from the universe of all possible words in all possible languages, my alibi here is that I studied law for a few years. Well, you should also work on the "syntax" thing, for I find the first phrase above ("while if...") incomplete. That said, you studied law? That makes two of us. Only in my case, "studied" mostly means I've watched every "Boston Legal" and "Law and Order" episode. >Most of the phrases I picked up en route are mostly obiter dicta, et cetera, with only limited utility. Others are enormously useful; "inter alia" has escaped into other parts of academia. Has it escaped because it is enormously useful, though, or because it makes for "pretty" and "refined-sounding" phrasing? Because academia is full of such, well, to put it succinctly, bullshit. (I admit that in law it can be well known and have an additional well defined role that augments the standard latin meaning). >But while ceteris paribus it might be the case that I could use Chinese characters, English has a far greater de facto affinity to, and stock of, Latin due to the historical connection commencing in the 1066 Norman Conquest and the imposition of the lingua Franca. Sure, but with the Chinese conquest of the economy and commerce space, commencing circa 1995 and the slow financial, diplomatic and cultural decline of the US, one could say that the era of the previous lingua Franca is over. Res ipsa loquitur. Err, I mean 用事实说话. (Come to think of it: does this succinctness mean that the Chinese can write their whole life story in Twitter with room to spare?)
- why-el 14y ago"Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent." (George Orwell, Politics and the English Language[1]) [1] http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/ http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit...
- jacques_chester 14y agoI love that essay. Can you give an equivalent word which conveys the full meaning of inter alia with the same degree of pithiness and directness?
- obstacle1 14y ago"One reason Wordpress won is..." "Wordpress won because..., for one." A word is none of direct, forceful, or brief if your audience must look it up to understand.
- jacques_chester 14y ago> A word is none of direct, forceful, or brief if your audience must look it up to understand. Good point.
- why-el 14y ago"Among other things" is one equivalent. Note that inter alia is a phrase, so you should probably be asking for an equivalent phrase and not a word.
- coldtea 14y ago>with the same degree of pithiness and directness? I think you overestimate the degree of both "pithiness and directness" in this particular use of the phrase.
- eli 14y agoMovable Type ran on every host that Wordpress supported, no?
- jacques_chester 14y agoEarlier versions were written in Perl, so no.