Comment by Cyberdog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Cyberdog | Hacker News Reader

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> I think WordPress is pushing other projects forward as well.

If anything, it's holding PHP back. I don't often work with WordPress projects, but when I have to, it makes me want to cry with how backwards they are. WordPress doesn't even have a real routing system!

Furthermore, its ecosystem just seems to encourage really, really bad things, like user-editable templates, PHP code "snippets" stored in the database, images which should be in themes stored as post attachments instead, and just general lack of respect for the idea of separating code and content. Almost every "plug-in" or template is crippled and begging for license fees and/or throwing spammy "notifications" all over the admin interface. I know this sort of stuff are more culture issues than code ones, but they're still problems, and ones you only really see happening in WordPress sites.

I get angry when a client comes to me with a bundle of WordPress mess and asks me to fix or improve something. It's shameful and disrespectful to take a client's money and give them a WordPress site in return. Do these people actually not realize there's far better things out there?

> It's shameful and disrespectful to take a client's money and give them a WordPress site in return

If their site is already Wordpress and they ask you to fix it, then your job is to fix their Wordpress site. Where is the shame and disrespect in that?

I agree about the spammy notifications and PHP code snippets. But sometimes code snippets can save time. It's better to have 10 code snippets to achieve 10 fixes, than 10 plugins to address those same fixes.

There must be a lot of developers out there paying their rent and feeding the cat from Wordpress plugin subscription earnings. While this does encourage the spammy ecosystem, it also encourages competition between plugin authors to maintain and develop quality plugins that do the job.

> Do these people actually not realize there's far better things out there?

I'd be interested to hear what good replacements there are for Wordpress+WooCommerce? I find WooCommerce slows down Wordpress, regardless of caching plugins and other tricks. It's annoying, and I'm genuinely interested in alternatives with as much flexibility and support?

Shopify?

Insofar as there is an overlap between the two I'd pick wordpress. Shopify has all the painful buy-in that comes with a bloated sass with too much market share coupled with a marketplace that is just as toxic as that of wordpress. At least with WordPress you can control your deployment.

Yep, I almost added "not Shopify" when asking for alternative woocommerce suggestions, but thought that was a given! I did indeed mean alternatives where deployment is controlled. Wordpress+Woocommerce does actually tick along okay, like an old bus it blows a bit of smoke and eventually gets the user to the checkout.

> If their site is already Wordpress and they ask you to fix it, then your job is to fix their Wordpress site. Where is the shame and disrespect in that?

None. I just finished up such a contract myself earlier this month. I was speaking of building new sites from scratch.

> I agree about the spammy notifications and PHP code snippets. But sometimes code snippets can save time.

Put code in code files, under version control. Not in the database. Not in a blob field that gets eval()ed and is editable by users. This is sane web dev 101.

> I'd be interested to hear what good replacements there are for Wordpress+WooCommerce?

Drupal 7 + Drupal Commerce was very nice back in the day. I don't know the current state of Commerce under Drupal 9 but it's what I'd start looking at first if someone wanted me to build them a store from the ground up. Magento is still around, though I've heard that its code is incomprehensible. And if you're not afraid to take the thin framework or frameworkless route, the Omnipay library [1] combined with standard CRUD for the products should get you pretty far.

1: https://omnipay.thephpleague.com

I do PHP work on the side and won’t touch Wordpress. It’s just plain awful.

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