Displaying 1 To 12 Of 12 Comments Some Orgnizations And WordPress Just Don’t Mix I wasn’t particularly upset about your original article, and thought you raised some valid points concerning a subset of enterprise features where WordPress doesn’t stand up particularly well, that we need to address. Reading your reply, here, however, I can understand why people are upset. You claim that you’re just saying “there are better choices in some case”, but really, you spent half that post trashing a CMS that many of us enjoy and find effective. Case in point: you’re doubling down here by repeating the myth that WordPress is just a blogging tool. It’s not the right CMS for your clients? So be it. WordPress wasn’t design for the blind or visually impaired, you’re correct (something a good canonical “visual impairment” plug-in should solve). It’s not a CMS? In the “penis size” contest I guarantee you that our clients, who use WordPress as a CMS and enjoy it, can easily match yours. You’re just instigating. It is a CMS, and in my fairly diversified CMS experience, a really good one. Not perfect, and not for everyone. In other words, I don’t think anyone is upset that you’re no longer promoting WordPress. Outside of the web developer bubble no one probably cares about or is influenced by your decision (other than your clients), and inside the bubble I don’t think anyone is switching platforms based on your post. People are upset that you’re crapping on WordPress on the way out the door. For the record, I agree that we’re “refining” and changing the up the UI side of things too often, mostly because it disrupts plug-ins that can solve things like disability concerns. However, that’s not detracting from functional advances. With few exceptions, the volunteers or paid core developers that focus on UI would not be spending their time on API type functionality or a multilingual module, and the code heads are not spending much energy on the UI changes. We’d still like to know which CMS, exactly, solves all of your problems. You told me that you’re in favor of a rapid release cycle, but other open source solutions that cater to some of your bigger concerns have releases of any significance maybe once every 2-3 years. There seem to be some respectable commercial solutions available these days, but you’re also more or less trapped by what they offer. The reality is that there *is* a trade off between very deep testing for disability compliance and browser backwards compatibility testing (especially if you want it at the *beta* phase) and rapid release cycles. Theoretically it can be solved with more man power, which is why @JJJ is absolutely right. » Posted By Jake Goldman On January 12, 2012 @ 4:59 PM This article has finally flipped me on the idea of core or “canonical” plugins. I opposed the idea when it was first raised – I believed it meant that, effectively, Automattic and Matt would play the role of king makers in the plugin space, rather than letting developers compete and win on their own merits. I now think it’s an idea whose time has come. As David Bissett said, the “perfect CMS” is an illusion. I really *don’t* want the overhead of a document management system and complex workflow or language management system baked into core, even though I service enterprise class vendors with (yes) CMS class implementations, and have at least 1 who would benefit from each of those features (which I’ve had to develop “around”). I came from an “enterprise” CMS world before WordPress and there is never a day when I miss those bloated messes that seem to nothing very well. However, these *are* genuinely important needs that are barriers to entry for some enterprise tier organizations. If you’re well educated about the “greater WordPress community” you’ll be aware of a few plugin solutions which range from worthwhile to barely passable, most of which have questionable support venues (a huge sticking point for large organizations). Products like Gravity Forms have cracked the nut for their niche, but it’s not clear that there’s a viable commercial path for each of these needs. That, and leadership seems philosophically against “commercial plugins”. Canonical plugins could solve this problem, if we have the resources and commitment. Officially endorsed and recognized solutions (as BuddyPress is to social networking) can plug some important holes without creating a bloated core product. I’d bet they would also force WordPress core to be even more extensible and prioritize its API to support the robust needs of things like a multilingual plug-in (take the nav menu system, whose lack of good hooks and API is a serious flaw for things like multilingual). His argument is weaker when addressing non-feature concerns. I still do almost all of my work on Windows (never an issue), and WordPress has made the choice (in my view, correctly) to prioritize pace and modernity over infinite backwards compatibility. Finally, the community should not dismiss anyone simply because they haven’t contributed. Many enterprises whom we should like to see adopt WordPress will never contribute, and nor should they have to (and I say this as someone who has contributed to core, pays a significant core contributor, and contributes significant time to free plugins). » Posted By Jake Goldman On January 10, 2012 @ 3:28 PM Plugin Quality Not Plugin Quantity The truth is, what makes me nervous about a high volume of plug-ins on a site is the sad reality that many plug-ins are simply poorly developed. Even if they work in a sandbox, they often don’t work well at a high traffic scale. You might get away with a few so-so plug-ins, but the odds of a badly developed plug-in taxing your site get higher the more plug-ins you install, and the more bad plug-ins you run, the worse the problem becomes. Even many well developed plug-ins have become insanely bloated, adding layers of code to WordPress execution for features most users will never touch. And I speak as the author of about 15 publicly available plug-ins. The reason I built Simple Local Avatars, for instance, is because *popular* plug-ins that were once simple solutions (like “Add Local Avatar”) have become – in my humble opinion – far too heavy and bloated. I don’t want that weight sitting on top of WordPress. I wanted a plug-in that added an avatar upload field to the author’s profile, and would use that avatar – if available – when an avatar was called. No new setting screens (there is a single new setting option in the Avatar section of Discussion — where it belongs — that lets users determine whether lower permission roles are allowed to upload avatars), no third party API communication with social media sites, no new dashboard widgets promoting the author, no new folders in wp-content. I had to build the answer. I’m not sure what the answer is, but I often see adding lots of plug-ins to WordPress as akin – in many cases – to all the freeware software people used to install on Windows. We all know how that ended up working out. » Posted By Jake Goldman On September 22, 2011 @ 4:13 PM Matt Mullenweg Named Son Of Gutenberg I’m not sure Gutenberg is the right analogy. Matt didn’t invent WYSIWYG content management or even the notion of web based blogging software. He had a significant role in popularizing it, and certainly WordPress has continuously raised the “ease” bar, and become a leading platform. The latter – popularizing – is arguably of equal importance: Apple didn’t invent the smartphone, but it sure as heck popularized it. I just don’t think it should be conflated with invention. » Posted By Jake Goldman On June 16, 2010 @ 10:10 PM Intro/Outro Needed For WPWeekly “WordCasts you love, from a tavern you trust. This is WordPress Weekly.” » Posted By Jake Goldman On June 16, 2010 @ 10:12 PM WPWeekly Episode 96 – Commercial Services Mark – thanks for the comprehensive answer to my question. The curiosity was genuine. I can’t remember if I said it during the podcast or after, but I mentioned that a conversation about WordPress “leadership” and the relationship between the open source project and the biggest commercial WordPress-based entity (Automattic) is worth some exploration, maybe an episode of its own. We touched on the issue (but tried not to let it consume the episode) because I think it’s fair to examine whether commercial SaaS endeavors like page.ly are actually competing on an equal playing field with Automattic, or whether Automattic has a unique relationship with the software. Whether it’s fair or not, I do think many WordPress “customers” have conflated the two. I’ve heard “WordPress software is managed and owned by a company, Automattic” from smart professionals more times than I count. Why, exactly, this is is unclear. I suspect it’s a combination of both factors you raise. I’m not sure how many listeners will read the comments. If you’re around at 2 pm EST on Saturday, we’re doing a call in show for the wrap up episode. It would be great if you could share your clarification and POV. » Posted By Jake Goldman On April 21, 2010 @ 4:49 PM WPWeekly Episode 94 – Commercial Themes Thanks for the feedback everyone! The guests were all terrific: I think they each contributed real and unique insight to the conversation, and were very forthcoming and open in talking about their internal operations. They made the show. I’m just as excited for this weekend’s plugin episode. We have some very outspoken, articulate, and passionate commercial plug-in developers we’ll be speaking to. » Posted By Jake Goldman On April 7, 2010 @ 4:03 PM Senior Front End WordPress Developer Wanted Ionut – to do anything not “out of the box” with WordPress, you really do need strong PHP / MySQL experience, IMO. » Posted By Jake Goldman On April 2, 2010 @ 3:56 PM Good riddance. TimThumb was awful for performance and reliability. Every individual page load would require another request and page load (and a heavy one on that) for every single thumbnail, every single time. » Posted By Jake Goldman On February 26, 2010 @ 4:55 PM I thought the description of the Monetization panel pretty clearly stated what it was about. Guess some folks don’t read past the title! I did hear some positive feedback on the session, as well, for what it’s worth. Compounding the fact that this 45 min session could have been easily been twice as long, opening remarks ran long which chopped another 10 minutes off the session. If you do put together a follow up podcast, I’d love to participate from the “questioner” / interviewer point of view. » Posted By Jake Goldman On January 26, 2010 @ 4:36 PM Curious about the specifics of custom post type support. The basic nuts and bolts are already in 2.9, with a big emphasis on “basic”. Since I doubt the 100% solution will be in 3.0, I’d like to know what new aspects, exactly, are going to be incorporated. Need to read up on the latest discussions I guess! » Posted By Jake Goldman On January 10, 2010 @ 6:11 PM What Is The Weakest Link Of WordPress? PERCEPTION OF VALUE. Our consulting business supports a number of platforms. WordPress is our favorite CMS platform to date, but when people make the decision to use WordPress they seem to be making the choice to use a low cost solution. Clients thinking about adopting Drupal (or some of the closed source CMS solutions) seem to start with a notion of service costs being about 3-4x higher than WordPress. I think there are two underlying factors: (1) WordPress is still perceived as a blogging tool first, and a CMS second. Blogging sites are often perceived as the “simpler” and low cost option. (2) WordPress’ greatest asset – its incredible admin ease of use, the ability for novices to do an incredible amount of basic customization, quality of many free plug-ins and themes – creates the sense that costs for even advanced customization are very low. The more we can do to promote (in the showcase and elsewhere) advanced CMS implementations that aren’t blogging centric and that beginners can’t create with a few clicks the more we can change that perception. » Posted By Jake Goldman On December 4, 2009 @ 10:04 AMComments Posted By Jake Goldman
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