Michal Bryxí1d ago
One amendment to my #WordPress rants: With no additional, premium, addons one can NOT build a basic website that meets some minimum requirements for a decent, real world website.
The core is barely enough to get started. And then the lure of “WordPress is Open Source, therefore it’s free to use it” and the super quick breaking of such promise makes me extremely bitter.
And #Automattic could absolutely change it by making the ecosystem less shitty.
Show threadAdrian W1d ago

@MichalBryxi I’m curious which vital things you think are missing from the core stuff and free options that mean you can’t build a “decent, real-world website”?

I’ve worked with Wordpress a fair bit over the years and have no illusions about it (more a tolerate-hate relationship) but I’ve seen enough real world websites built without needing premium stuff over the years.

Not that I want to be doing any of it any more though - Wordpress does need a serious revamp.

Show threadMichal Bryxí
@adrianww Oh boy:
1) i18n - in my world there is exactly zero websites that need layout, content, URLs/domains and meta data in only one language.
2) An actual content block builder. I want to define books that have 1:N relationship to reviews and under each book I want to show average stars for given book. Without. Writing. Code.
Mar 16 at 8:15pmWeb
Show threadMichal Bryxí1d ago

@adrianww
3) CMS capabilities useable for end user. Hide everything they won’t need. And I mean everything. Expose content editor of choice per each content field (time picker, value slider, image upload, …)
4) Image upload/select/manage/adjust(scale,crop,filter,…)
Etc.

Fun fact: #Drupal had some of the above in core and all of them in community for decades now. I seriously can’t comprehend why is #WordPress more popular.

Show threadMichal Bryxí1d ago
@adrianww I think the main thing that piss me off is that WordPress is so prehistorically non flexible that it hardcodes the notion of “page”, “article” and “comment” even to this day. That was known to be the incorrect way to think about CMS back in 1998 and is still.
Show threadMichal Bryxí1d ago
@adrianww For comparison: Drupal always had “content type” and “fields”. And you just build your own. Sure they provide good defaults (page, article and comment), but you can do whatever with it you want.
Want extra date to article? Ok. Want image with comment? You have it. Want relationship between page and my-awesome-custom-content? Sure.
This absolutely basic feature of CMS requires an incredible amount of work to get with #WordPress
Show threadAmber Weinberg22h ago
@MichalBryxi @adrianww I really don’t understand what you mean. I can do all of that super easy and WordPress, zero plug-ins do you mean you want to do these things without having to do any code? Because even Drupal requires a dev.
Show threadMichal Bryxí9h ago
@amber Disclaimer: I only ever in-fucked existing WP projects and I touched Drupal last time ~10 years ago.
But that very case I described above was possible to build inside Drupal with exactly zero coding. I never ever touched any PHP code when working with Drupal and I had such degree of power and flexibility.
With WordPress I’m always scared what custom coding I will have to fight even for absolutely trivial things. And somehow WP conditioned people to think it’s normal. It’s not.
Show threadMichal Bryxí9h ago

@amber Maybe the disparity is there on what approach is considered acceptable:
1) It’s in core
2) It’s a free plugin
3) It’s a freemium plugin
4) It’s a premium plugin
5) it’s a premium plugin with subscription model
[looooong time nothing]
6) Custom code

I can’t stress enough how bad it is to do custom coding over CMS. It always eventually hurts people down the road.

Show threadAmber Weinberg7h ago

@MichalBryxi ive worked in several different CMSes (WP, Drupal, Joomla, Craft) and they all require coding knowledge. What it sounds like you want, is a drag n drop cms builder, but those have so many drawbacks.

What you described via other peoles code is why i hate/usually wont take on other peoples code. If they dont follow proper standards, anything will be a PIA.

Also, some of the stuff you mentioned, like image editing, is already part of the WP core with zero code needed…

Show threadMichal Bryxí5h ago
@amber Not going to go further than a statement without the burden of proof, but in Drupal this is possible without coding. I am certain by that, because I did it. Exactly this.
Show threadAdrian W1d ago

@MichalBryxi Yep, lots more fair criticism there, I won’t deny it. And I think you’ve nailed the issue here. All of that stuff can be done natively or free of charge in Wordpress but it can be agonisingly difficult and you may well have to build it yourself.

The real problem is that Wordpress is a pretty decent blogging platform that is pretending to be a fully fledged CMS. Or people try to use it like that.

If I’m honest, I’m glad to be out of it all.

Show threadMichal Bryxí1d ago

@adrianww Right? For simple blog it’s doing a decent job. But for everything else people try to use it for? Yikes.

I helped so many friends over the years to un-fuck their WordPresses.

With the advent of AI tools it feels like the time when letting an agent to build bespoke solution from scratch might be actually faster than trying to fix the issues in those cases.

And I’m sad that I mean it.

Show threadAdrian W1d ago

@MichalBryxi Using WP for all kinds of stuff? Never!

OK, that’s a lie - been there, done that. And for paying clients with some success back in the day. Thankfully, sites rarely needed un-fucking, except the odd time when a WP core/plug-in update buggered things up. But that’s because we kept a close eye on the evil little sods!

But if I were doing it again? I’d probably do things rather differently. Blogs or simple content portfolio stuff? Maybe WP. More complex stuff? Nope!

Show threadAdrian W1d ago

@MichalBryxi Yep, i18n/l10n is probably a fair criticism. The content builder thing is an arguable one. On the one hand, it would be good if the core was built in such a way as to support things like that more easily (either natively or via a simple and free additional package/plug-in). On the other hand, that’s a specific sort of requirement that isn’t needed everywhere so it’s kind of a natural plug-in or additional code scenario.

But, yeah, not ideal either way.