4 ms·

SO many reasons, many of which boil down into the following sentiment: - Wordpress has become a over-convoluted behemoth, with a needlessly complex structure t

SO many reasons, many of which boil down into the following sentiment: - Wordpress has become a over-convoluted behemoth, with a needlessly complex structure that is not overly extensible. It is a pain to develop for/with/around. I think everyone can appreciate the very tangible effect that Wordpress has had on the web. However, it is currently in the rather painful throws of a transition from blogging platform to CMS, and has been for quite some time. There are number of other reasons: - You want to avoid PHP. - You don't need most of the feature bloat that comes along with Wordpress. - You want to use Markdown. - You want to try something different.

rocky1138 13y ago
I love php. I also love developing Wordpress themes and plugins. I'm not sure you're making a convincing argument. Then again, Markdown would be neat to work with, but in the end I'd just rather use html if I need to markup something. And I do like trying new things.
- grin 13y ago
  Plenty of ways to try Markdown within Wordpress: http://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/markdown http://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/markdown
- kerryritter 13y ago
  Agreed. WordPress is hardly difficult to extend or build for.
- hugofirth 13y ago
  I develop with PHP regularly and absolutely love the strides the community has been making with Composer, the PSRs & frameworks like Laravel. I have also built tooling, plugins & themes for wordpress. I personally found it to be a frustrating experience: like I had been lobbed back to the days of PHP 4 when I thought all the PHP haters might have had a point (I wish to be emphatic - I don't think this anymore). From a development perspective: - The "loop" is bad design - with no regard for separation of concerns and maintainability. - The lack of namespacing means you have to go through a dance, working around Wordpress's idiosyncratic structure, in order to build around Wordpress effectively. - I personally don't think much of their documentation.
alan_cx 13y ago
With all due.... You say "SO many reasons", but at best you have 4, of which only one seems to hold any weight. Avoiding PHP is not something the average blogger would care about, bloat = features and most normal people like features, trying something different is woolly at best, which leaves wanting to use markdown. Do that many people really want to use markdown? Are you 100% sure this isn't just an anti thing like anti MS, anti facebook, and now anti wordpress?
- andyhmltn 13y ago
  Wordpress is incredibly bloated. If you've ever tried to make a semi-large blog with it you'll know exactly what I mean. This is literally just a setup and run blog. Wordpress used to be that but it's turned into a huge CMS that's trying to do 2000 things at once. Jack of all trades and master of none if you will.
  - jonheller 13y ago
    > This is literally just a setup and run blog. Wordpress isn't? Unless things have changed you install it and start adding blog posts.
    - andyhmltn 13y ago
      Not really no. I mean you can but Wordpress's admin page feels like you are fighting just to post something. Wordpress is no longer really targeted at people that want to get a blog up and running and just that. That's what ghost is. It's a blogging system without all the added bloat and horrible API's to go with it.
      - Karunamon 13y ago
        Wordpress's admin page feels like you are fighting just to post something. ??? 1) Log into admin area (usually /wp-admin) 2) Click "Posts" on left sidebar (first icon on the top) 3) Write 4) Submit Is the current iteration of wordpress different from this workflow? Is Ghost different?
mbesto 13y ago
So, it's novel?
- hugofirth 13y ago
  I don't believe that is a bad reason for trying something. Committing resources to using ghost in a mission critical environment would be demonstrably silly - however being well informed of the tools available to you and their suitability to purpose is just good sense.
  - mbesto 13y ago
    I don't disagree. I think the greater point here is that many people are irrationally choosing to switch to Ghost because "it's better" without really know why it is better. "Because it's not PHP" is the most irrational response I've ever read.... Good marketing showing how to solve problems most perceive they have...
    - hugofirth 13y ago
      I regret putting that in my original comment because I believe people take that to mean that I am PHP "hating" (I don't know what that even means). I set the record straight in another comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6547794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6547794 . I use PHP extensively and think it has come a hell of a long way over the last couple of years. My meaning with the orignal point of "avoiding PHP" was more in the spirit of platform considerations. You may, for whatever reason, not want to include PHP as part of your system architecture. By being written in JS, Ghost offers an alternative in terms of platform (where something like Drupal, or Dropplets would not).
      - mbesto 13y ago
        I don't discredit you for your hate :) The problem I have is why on earth is this an important feature set? > You may, for whatever reason, not want to include PHP as part of your system architecture. But why? why? why? Why it does it matter if it's called PHP or JavaScript or GabeSpeek (made up). As long it works and it's maintainable, why on earth does this make any rational person's (not saying you specifically) list of features?
Theodores 13y ago
Sure anyone and their pet hamster could develop for Ghost and get what they want out of it, however, clients know Wordpress, non-technical account manager type people know Wordpress, inane managers know Wordpress, developers know Wordpress, people that draw pretty pictures in Photoshop and call it design know Wordpress and even my Dad knows Wordpress. I have not heard any of them want to 'avoid PHP' (they only know it is Wordpress in most cases), they don't complain about 'feature bloat' (they don't have the full admin login, just author rights), they are happy with WYSIWYG (and haven't a clue what Markdown is) and finally, they want something they know rather than something completely different!!! So it is down to network effects. Everyone knows Wordpress and the famous five minute install.
stephen_g 13y ago
Also, the ORM appears to have a Postgres backend, which I like a lot better than being locked into MySQL like with Wordpress.

rocky1138 13y ago

I love php. I also love developing Wordpress themes and plugins. I'm not sure you're making a convincing argument. Then again, Markdown would be neat to work with, but in the end I'd just rather use html if I need to markup something. And I do like trying new things.

grin 13y ago
Plenty of ways to try Markdown within Wordpress: http://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/markdown http://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/markdown
kerryritter 13y ago
Agreed. WordPress is hardly difficult to extend or build for.
hugofirth 13y ago
I develop with PHP regularly and absolutely love the strides the community has been making with Composer, the PSRs & frameworks like Laravel. I have also built tooling, plugins & themes for wordpress. I personally found it to be a frustrating experience: like I had been lobbed back to the days of PHP 4 when I thought all the PHP haters might have had a point (I wish to be emphatic - I don't think this anymore). From a development perspective: - The "loop" is bad design - with no regard for separation of concerns and maintainability. - The lack of namespacing means you have to go through a dance, working around Wordpress's idiosyncratic structure, in order to build around Wordpress effectively. - I personally don't think much of their documentation.

alan_cx 13y ago

With all due.... You say "SO many reasons", but at best you have 4, of which only one seems to hold any weight. Avoiding PHP is not something the average blogger would care about, bloat = features and most normal people like features, trying something different is woolly at best, which leaves wanting to use markdown. Do that many people really want to use markdown? Are you 100% sure this isn't just an anti thing like anti MS, anti facebook, and now anti wordpress?

andyhmltn 13y ago
Wordpress is incredibly bloated. If you've ever tried to make a semi-large blog with it you'll know exactly what I mean. This is literally just a setup and run blog. Wordpress used to be that but it's turned into a huge CMS that's trying to do 2000 things at once. Jack of all trades and master of none if you will.
- jonheller 13y ago
  > This is literally just a setup and run blog. Wordpress isn't? Unless things have changed you install it and start adding blog posts.
  - andyhmltn 13y ago
    Not really no. I mean you can but Wordpress's admin page feels like you are fighting just to post something. Wordpress is no longer really targeted at people that want to get a blog up and running and just that. That's what ghost is. It's a blogging system without all the added bloat and horrible API's to go with it.
    - Karunamon 13y ago
      Wordpress's admin page feels like you are fighting just to post something. ??? 1) Log into admin area (usually /wp-admin) 2) Click "Posts" on left sidebar (first icon on the top) 3) Write 4) Submit Is the current iteration of wordpress different from this workflow? Is Ghost different?

mbesto 13y ago

So, it's novel?

hugofirth 13y ago
I don't believe that is a bad reason for trying something. Committing resources to using ghost in a mission critical environment would be demonstrably silly - however being well informed of the tools available to you and their suitability to purpose is just good sense.
- mbesto 13y ago
  I don't disagree. I think the greater point here is that many people are irrationally choosing to switch to Ghost because "it's better" without really know why it is better. "Because it's not PHP" is the most irrational response I've ever read.... Good marketing showing how to solve problems most perceive they have...
  - hugofirth 13y ago
    I regret putting that in my original comment because I believe people take that to mean that I am PHP "hating" (I don't know what that even means). I set the record straight in another comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6547794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6547794 . I use PHP extensively and think it has come a hell of a long way over the last couple of years. My meaning with the orignal point of "avoiding PHP" was more in the spirit of platform considerations. You may, for whatever reason, not want to include PHP as part of your system architecture. By being written in JS, Ghost offers an alternative in terms of platform (where something like Drupal, or Dropplets would not).
    - mbesto 13y ago
      I don't discredit you for your hate :) The problem I have is why on earth is this an important feature set? > You may, for whatever reason, not want to include PHP as part of your system architecture. But why? why? why? Why it does it matter if it's called PHP or JavaScript or GabeSpeek (made up). As long it works and it's maintainable, why on earth does this make any rational person's (not saying you specifically) list of features?

Theodores 13y ago

Sure anyone and their pet hamster could develop for Ghost and get what they want out of it, however, clients know Wordpress, non-technical account manager type people know Wordpress, inane managers know Wordpress, developers know Wordpress, people that draw pretty pictures in Photoshop and call it design know Wordpress and even my Dad knows Wordpress. I have not heard any of them want to 'avoid PHP' (they only know it is Wordpress in most cases), they don't complain about 'feature bloat' (they don't have the full admin login, just author rights), they are happy with WYSIWYG (and haven't a clue what Markdown is) and finally, they want something they know rather than something completely different!!! So it is down to network effects. Everyone knows Wordpress and the famous five minute install.

stephen_g 13y ago

Also, the ORM appears to have a Postgres backend, which I like a lot better than being locked into MySQL like with Wordpress.