5 ms·

What does wordpress have that something like Ghost doesn't? Working with wordpress is a real pain, it's code is not what I would want to dig into a friday after

by fdsary 12y ago

What does wordpress have that something like Ghost doesn't? Working with wordpress is a real pain, it's code is not what I would want to dig into a friday afternoon. Why is wordpress still popular?

tim333 12y ago
There are an awful lot of themes and plugins? I was at a talk the other day where some guys had built quite a good support social network for MS sufferers using Wordpress and Buddypress (shift.ms) in spite of not being programmers. I dunno if there's another platform where they could have done as well?
johnward 12y ago
An ecosystem and the fact that it powers 18% of the web.
- mikeschinkel 12y ago
  23% at this point.
krapp 12y ago
The vast, vast majority of people who work with wordpress never have to see the code, beyond some settings in a config file. You have to not think about it as a developer and think about it as a consumer who just wants "a site" with themes and plugins that "just work" (and with wordpress, they mostly do.) Although as a developer, I agree - the code is pretty awful, even for PHP. But... small business owners, bloggers and such couldn't care less about that.
- mikeschinkel 12y ago
  As a pragmatic developer, I love WordPress. it's the most productive programming platform I've found, and with PhpStorm to develop with it, I'm come to find it rather elegant, albeit not what most PHP non-WP programmers want or expect. Why do I like it? It's the most productive PHP development platform that exists, hands down. With it I only have to code the unique functionality I need and not everything else. P.S. Before anyone preaches OOP at me, realize I started teaching OOP back in 1989, and n 1991 I even wrote a book that had several chapters covering OOP.
armandososa 12y ago
Feature-wise It has everything that Ghost have and more, lots more. That's the whole point with Ghost, that it only does a small, simple subset of what WP does.
egypturnash 12y ago
Simple UI. Assloads of plugins. History. Lowest-common-denominator hosting requirements. I mean, I've been using WP to run my site since before Ghost was even an idea. I've got a blog, a couple of image galleries, and a couple of graphic novels. I'm using styles I designed myself for all of these, plus about a dozen plugins. I didn't have to dig into its guts to make this stuff work. I didn't have to type a single terminal command to make it happen. I just had to upload some files via FTP, then leverage HTML/CSS and some basic PHP knowledge. And now I just type stuff into a web form, or fire up a client app on my computer (or my phone/tablet), and post whatever the hell I want to with very little friction. Those posts get mirrored to Facebook, Livejournal, Twitter, and Tumblr automatically. Comic pages get automagically collected into [chapters](http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/chapter/01/ http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/chapter/01/). Images get optimized, then mirrored to Wordpress' CDN. Spam comments get caught. I'm looking at [Ghost's download page](https://ghost.org/download/ https://ghost.org/download/) and what do I see? It requires Node. How many web hosts have Node preinstalled? Do I really have time in my busy schedule of drawing comics to install Node, get it running, and keep it up to date? My host keeps PHP up to date for me and I can get on with making the content, rather than fiddling with the blog. I wouldn't want to dig deep into WP. Version 1 is ten years old. There's probably some horrible code from 1.0 still lying around that codebase - hell, there's probably some code left over from 2001's B2, which WP forked off of. But I don't want to dig into its code anyway. I just want to have a website that I don't have to edit by hand. From the perspective of someone using WP to manage their content, rather than as a project in and of itself, working with it is pretty easy.
Eric_WVGG 12y ago
stuff I’ve done with Wordpress lately… - made a paid membership system for a major trade organization, including renewable credit card payments and integration with a third-party CRM - built an event tracking calendar, including import from Eventbrite - a password-protected “garden” for designers to exchange wireframes and portfolio pieces with clients It all works extremely well. Wordpress is open, well-supported and well-documented. I don't like the templating language (at all), but otherwise Wordpress works extremely well and is somehow improving with age.
higherpurpose 12y ago
I wonder, is there a good open source Go-based blogging platform out there, too?
treve 12y ago
At the very least it should tell you that the success of a product does not necessarily depend on your experience with the products code-base.
girvo 12y ago
Plugins, plugins, plugins. And client familiarity, which can't be discounted (and is a two-edge sword in and of itself). I'm no fan of Wordpress and would rather use something else, but at this point there are few systems that can truly challenge it. I hope that changes soon, however.

by fdsary 12y ago

What does wordpress have that something like Ghost doesn't? Working with wordpress is a real pain, it's code is not what I would want to dig into a friday afternoon. Why is wordpress still popular?

tim333 12y ago

There are an awful lot of themes and plugins? I was at a talk the other day where some guys had built quite a good support social network for MS sufferers using Wordpress and Buddypress (shift.ms) in spite of not being programmers. I dunno if there's another platform where they could have done as well?

johnward 12y ago

An ecosystem and the fact that it powers 18% of the web.

mikeschinkel 12y ago
23% at this point.

krapp 12y ago

The vast, vast majority of people who work with wordpress never have to see the code, beyond some settings in a config file. You have to not think about it as a developer and think about it as a consumer who just wants "a site" with themes and plugins that "just work" (and with wordpress, they mostly do.) Although as a developer, I agree - the code is pretty awful, even for PHP. But... small business owners, bloggers and such couldn't care less about that.

mikeschinkel 12y ago
As a pragmatic developer, I love WordPress. it's the most productive programming platform I've found, and with PhpStorm to develop with it, I'm come to find it rather elegant, albeit not what most PHP non-WP programmers want or expect. Why do I like it? It's the most productive PHP development platform that exists, hands down. With it I only have to code the unique functionality I need and not everything else. P.S. Before anyone preaches OOP at me, realize I started teaching OOP back in 1989, and n 1991 I even wrote a book that had several chapters covering OOP.

armandososa 12y ago

Feature-wise It has everything that Ghost have and more, lots more. That's the whole point with Ghost, that it only does a small, simple subset of what WP does.

egypturnash 12y ago

Simple UI. Assloads of plugins. History. Lowest-common-denominator hosting requirements. I mean, I've been using WP to run my site since before Ghost was even an idea. I've got a blog, a couple of image galleries, and a couple of graphic novels. I'm using styles I designed myself for all of these, plus about a dozen plugins. I didn't have to dig into its guts to make this stuff work. I didn't have to type a single terminal command to make it happen. I just had to upload some files via FTP, then leverage HTML/CSS and some basic PHP knowledge. And now I just type stuff into a web form, or fire up a client app on my computer (or my phone/tablet), and post whatever the hell I want to with very little friction. Those posts get mirrored to Facebook, Livejournal, Twitter, and Tumblr automatically. Comic pages get automagically collected into [chapters](http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/chapter/01/ http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/chapter/01/). Images get optimized, then mirrored to Wordpress' CDN. Spam comments get caught. I'm looking at [Ghost's download page](https://ghost.org/download/ https://ghost.org/download/) and what do I see? It requires Node. How many web hosts have Node preinstalled? Do I really have time in my busy schedule of drawing comics to install Node, get it running, and keep it up to date? My host keeps PHP up to date for me and I can get on with making the content, rather than fiddling with the blog. I wouldn't want to dig deep into WP. Version 1 is ten years old. There's probably some horrible code from 1.0 still lying around that codebase - hell, there's probably some code left over from 2001's B2, which WP forked off of. But I don't want to dig into its code anyway. I just want to have a website that I don't have to edit by hand. From the perspective of someone using WP to manage their content, rather than as a project in and of itself, working with it is pretty easy.

Eric_WVGG 12y ago

stuff I’ve done with Wordpress lately… - made a paid membership system for a major trade organization, including renewable credit card payments and integration with a third-party CRM - built an event tracking calendar, including import from Eventbrite - a password-protected “garden” for designers to exchange wireframes and portfolio pieces with clients It all works extremely well. Wordpress is open, well-supported and well-documented. I don't like the templating language (at all), but otherwise Wordpress works extremely well and is somehow improving with age.

higherpurpose 12y ago

I wonder, is there a good open source Go-based blogging platform out there, too?

treve 12y ago

At the very least it should tell you that the success of a product does not necessarily depend on your experience with the products code-base.

girvo 12y ago

Plugins, plugins, plugins. And client familiarity, which can't be discounted (and is a two-edge sword in and of itself). I'm no fan of Wordpress and would rather use something else, but at this point there are few systems that can truly challenge it. I hope that changes soon, however.