Ask HN: How to build a Hacker-News-like website using Wordpress? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to build a Hacker-News-like website using Wordpress?

7 pointsgrainfire5 comments

Hello HN,

I want to make a website similar to Hacker news format using wordpress (or any other CMS). I am still learning html, css, js and php, so really would like to take some advice on where to start and what available technology to use.

The main feature of the website is similar to HN: users can submit news on front-end. Others can comment and vote. There is also blog function which I think most CMS can do well.

Thanks! Derek

View on HN

The HN "basic" source code is available online[1] or if you're looking for something modern, try Telescope which is built in Node and the Meteor framework[2]. There is also a demo available[3] Or you could try forking the Reddit source code[4] and setting it up, but im not sure if you'll need multiple subreddits functionality.

[1]https://github.com/wting/hackernews

[2]http://telesc.pe/

[3]http://demo.telesc.pe/

[4]https://github.com/reddit/reddit

Thanks, Telescope looks really good. Will try this one first to see if I can get something done

There are tons of themes and plugins out there that you can download and learn from [1]. But, you can actually make any raw wordpress theme work as far as submissions and comments are concerned, but it gets complex at the voting part. You'd have to make tables in mysql to track the votes for each article and user and comments etc... I suggest you download a free theme or plugin and observe.

1= http://www.premiumwp.com/tag/social-voting-wordpress-theme/ It hink this is paid and I'm Not affiliated!

Wordpress is really only good if your building a simple blog or info site. It would be very difficult to add in the amount of customization you would need to create a HN clone in Wordpress.

I would advise you look into something like Django or Rails which is a better fit for sites which need custom functionality.

You might be better off starting from scratch with a framework in the language of your choice. Django (python) and Rails (ruby) have already been mentioned but of course PHP has plenty to choose from. Maybe Laravel?

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