Here's Why To Avoid Wordpress

by Dennis Miedema

Posted: 17 years ago 17 replies

WEB DESIGN

1) Created a Wordpress blog with help of a webmaster December last year, which took more than 20 hours because I had to import a lot of articles from a previous blog, but the time it takes to change my entire other website? 8 at best... which means Wordpress is not that practical

2) Every time I need to make a change to all the articles, for example because I want to add an opt in box for my newsletter... I have to manually go through the WP menu, manually edit the WP article, manually check if it's correct, etc. Time needed for any "system wide change": 3 hours. With a normal site: 1, copy paste and that's it.

3) Try improving it... and you need to hire some coder just to make a simple improvement such as rewarding people for a comment with the Comment Relish plugin. Result: it takes a week to find a descent coder, couple days to make a backup, etc. Normal site: start editing HTML and thats it

4) Backing up your site... they advise you to make a MySQL database, BUT DO NOT DO THIS. Because here's the result: can't access my blog anymore, can't bring it back online and the worst thing about is: normally you ahve article1.html, article2.html and now? I have nothing left because there are no .html's of my articles.

END RESULT: I need to pay several hundred bucks to create an entirely new blog

So here's a simple question for all you coders out there:
- I don't want Blogger, Wordpress or other so called "useful" blogging service
- I do want my own blog, and people should be able to comment on articles.. and get rewarded for it in the same way as Comment Relish does
- I want a blog with friggin .html pages, not techie mumbo jumbo guides that take 809 hours to go through... just to know how to make a back up

Is that possible? If so, then there's no reason for Wordpress to exist in my opinion. They're costing me dollars over here, and it's a lame site because it makes me feel stupid for "only" knowing HTML language.

I seriously despise the non practical, annoying, round-ab-out practice of the entire Wordpress system, site, staf and so called forums where you have to wait a week to get an answer while your site is DEAD.

Had to vent for a bit there, my bad. But anyone reading this will understand when I say: putting in 50 hours in a project only to see it vanish into thin air because of some stupid mistake that can't be traced... is not very enjoyable.

#avoid #wordpress

awesometbn 17 years ago

I hesitate to reply, since it sounds like you are frustrated with WordPress, so I don't know how much I am going to get through to you. But I have a couple of comments.

- You can still have .html pages with WordPress. Looking into WP Cache or WP Super Cache or something similar. This will generate .html pages for you automatically using the content you previously entered into WordPress.

- WordPress is designed to be a database-driven platform using SQL database files to store all of your posts and pages. When a visitor views your blog, they are actually looking at the results of many database queries that happen quickly behind the scenes.

- If you want to add an opt in box you can always add a sidebar module instead of directly editing each and every article. That way you make a single change and it shows up on all pages, or you can set conditions to limit which pages will show your opt in box. This is the same way it works if you want to change the theme or overall appearance of the blog. You simply select a theme, upload it to your themes subdirectory, and use the admin screen to change themes. It's a one time action that updates everything, instead of manually editing one page at a time.

- There are two ways to use WordPress. One is to use a hosted service where you login to wordpress.com and start using the admin screen to setup your blog and enter new content. Another way is to have your own web server, or one that you pay to control. On your own server you can install the WordPress software and have much more control over all of the security settings and updates and backups.

I've used WordPress for a while, and I have several client websites running WordPress without any problems. It works well as a content management system, especially for less technical staff who are just updating articles and price lists and photographs. I am sorry to hear about the problems you have been experiencing. If you want to post some specific problems and error messages here, I'm sure a few people will chime in with suggestions and recommendations.
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NeutroHost [Jon] 17 years ago

awesometbn has just given you a good reply there.

I'd just like to add that WordPress is an open source script, and is continuously evolving. It is also free script and one of the best CMS around.

From what it looks like, it's probably your first time handling Wordpress and it's probably a good idea in that case to hire someone experienced. Once you get to know Wordpress, you'll be pleasantly surprised with what it can do.
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rayjay777 17 years ago

awesometbn,
I am so impressed with your answer to Dennis I don't know what to say other than Great Anser! Workpress is just like everything else: It takes time and study to use it effectively and I, for one, am not ready to give up on it.

BTW...Do marketers use wordpress as a blog for each niche or product they market?
Thought you may know the answer to that.
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VisualWebEffects 17 years ago

I have several clients using wordpress. they love it. the problem comes from the fact that it takes time to get use to if you have never used it before.

awesometbn, says it all pretty much with the way he explains wordpress.

Just keep in mind Wordpress is not THE end all and BE all solution. It all depends on what your trying to do. But by the sounds of it Wordpress is what you need you just need to take some time and fully explore what it is truly capable of.
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cma01

17 years ago

Originally Posted by Dennis Miedema

1)

2) Every time I need to make a change to all the articles, for example because I want to add an opt in box for my newsletter... I have to manually go through the WP menu, manually edit the WP article, manually check if it's correct, etc. Time needed for any "system wide change": 3 hours. With a normal site: 1, copy paste and that's it.

No, you do not have to update every individual article. That is the point of a themed database site, you only have to change it in one place and it will update the entire site.

As awesome said, you can either add the optin to the side bar, or you can edit the theme for the post and add it there.

You're right, it is different from a static html site that you can get away with not knowing code by just using a WYSIWYG editor. However, just because it takes some expertise to develop, it doesn't mean that it is "worthless," it just means that you aren't familiar with how the platform works yet.

Why would you need to spend all that time and money on installing a plugin? All you do is upload the plugin file from the admin and click activate. If you're having it customized, it would take time or money or both regardless of the platform.

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vagabondette 17 years ago

Agree with the others. Wordpress is great in my experience - I've never had a problem. If you have something you want to appear on every page (like an opt-in box) you can just add it to the single page template in about 2 minutes and it'll automatically show. I did that for my blog and it works great.

It sounds like you're making things much more difficult than they really need to be...
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Richard Whyte 17 years ago

Hi

I also have many clients setup on Wordpress... I have one client that can barely type and he has over 40 Wordpress sites...

He is an Internet Marketer that deosn't want to know the tech side of things... But is a very good copywriter....

As for the backups... It's not hard to learn to do a backup of your entire system. I do this on a regular bases... And burn each site backup onto a CD... If you Google Wordpress backup, you will find good instructions online on how to do this... More than I want to type here.

Having been around in the IT world for many, many years, I have seen your story many times... You are using a fairly powerful piece of software that has many features. You have hired someone that may not know all the ins and outs of it... You may have been given so incorrect advise about it and now that you are having a problem, you feel the software is crap...

Believe me, if you want to hire a programmer to start from scratch and build you a system to compare with the features of Wordpress and be as stable, I hope you have some very deep pockets because to get near the stability and feature list of Wordpress it is going to take a sharp programmer 100's of hours....

The more you learn about the tools you want to use, the better. I suggest that you go to Amazon. Do some research on working with Wordpress... Make sure you read the reviews of the book by others that have purchased it... Then buy it when you find a good one that teaches how to work with Wordpress and make changes to your theme.

Invest in some education of the tools you want to use... In the long run it is well worth it....

The answer given by awesometbn is a common one used in Wordpress. You could also insert a piece of code to have a customer area right under the main banner at the top of the page... You can find these snippets out on the Internet... In that area, you could setup your form and it would be visable on every page... These solutions are easy to ad to a Wordpress Theme... Again, invest in your education of the tools you are using.

A decent book to get if you want to use Wordpress and you want to be able to change the look and feel of your theme is "Wordpress Theme Design" By Tessa Blakeley Silver.

With that book in hand, you can drop a theme into Wordpress and start making changes to it.... You can get it to look exactly like you want to.

As you can tell... I like Wordpress. I know it is not perfect. No piece of software is... But it is a very stable platform to build many different types of easy to manage system upon.

I hope you will take some time to learn about it before you decide to write it off as crap and start looking for something else.

Have a Great Day!
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- kingW 17 years ago
  
  When I first used Wp, I didn't know a thing about it. I didn't know how to change/upload theme or plugin and even I didn't know on how to setup one.
  
  But overtime, I try to learn and now the only thing I don't know about Wp is how to create my own plugin...but I'm still yet to make any significant money online...:p
  
  Thanks
  
  1 reply
  
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  carlos123 17 years ago
  
  I beg to differ with the majority of responses on this thread.
  
  I would never use Wordpress for a simple site. I have created a PHP object class that spits out web sites quickly with a minimum of fuss. I just change a few lines of code to tell it what header, footer, background, and so forth I want to use and voila...a website pops out.
  
  Wordpress is an absolute pain in comparison. You not only have to learn how to work with it but then you have to constantly be updating it to close up security holes that appear in it. And it uses a MySQL back end when in fact you don't need MySQL anything for a simple web site that has nothing more complicated than a contact to email form. It's a ridiculous waste of resources.
  
  People swear up and down about how great Wordpress is. I say better to learn a bit of HTML, CSS, and PHP which will do you well for many years to come and allow you to do what you want rather than what WordPress allows, instead of becoming so dependent on Wordpress doing things for you that you become a web dummy of sorts who doesn't know any other way to create a site than by using Wordpress.
  
  Many times using Wordpress is akin to using a tank to go down to the local convenience store to buy a loaf of bread. Overkill to the max.
  
  Yet people love it. Go figure.
  
  I guess it's like people being in love with text messaging on cell phones when it would be so much easier and nicer to just call someone and say "Hi" audibly.
  
  Or being in love with Twitter when no one really cares exactly when you are picking your nose (unless you are a star I guess).
  
  Usually there are simpler and better ways of doing things than just following the masses to do what they do. Just because everyone and their dog uses WordPress doesn't mean it's the best thing since sliced bread.
  
  Carlos
  
  Thanks
  
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Lloyd Buchinski 17 years ago

Carlos, I really enjoyed that answer. I tend to use Notepad++ and copy an existing page into it, then modify whatever I would like and get a new page very quickly. It's not as fast as your approach I'm sure, but great for me.

I guess html sites can get hacked, but I think only if someone can crack the password, or from something on your computer.

Just for the savings in bandwidth and faster loading (I'm an efficiency freak) I'll go for the simple sites.

It is a shame that notepad++ had to go with a 4 syllable name. I think we should just call it notepad and refer to the ms offering as notepad minus minus. I'm not trying to take a shot at MS. There might not be any company that has done more to make the web what it is. It's just that I thought it was funny. Some days it doesn't take much to amuse me.
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- carlos123 17 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Lloyd Buchinski
  
  I guess html sites can get hacked, but I think only if someone can crack the password, or from something on your computer.
  
  It's pretty tough to hack into a site that doesn't use MySQL (no MySQL injection attacks), that doesn't rely on the secure PHP coding (or not) of countless plugin authors who may not know the first thing about PHP security coding, and which uses nothing more complicated than one simply index.php file to do the heavy lifting and HTML page generating. Where the content of pages is inside plain text files.
  
  I mean what kind of nefarious and evil hack can you accomplish on a plain text file? LOL.
  
  WordPress can be hacked through a much greater number of entry points (i,e. admin interface, MySQL, plugins, etc.) which makes it much tougher to secure.
  
  When it comes to security...generally speaking simpler is better. While WordPress may seem to make things simpler on the surface for the end user it is in fact a very complex piece of software underneath which makes it all the easier to hack into. Especially for installs where end users either don't have a clue or lack the will to properly keep their install updated with security updates (most WordPress users are of the type who would ask "Security update?"..."What's that?").
  
  Carlos
  
  Thanks
  
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vagabondette

17 years ago

@ Carlos and Lloyd, the OP is creating a blog, not a simple static site so I'm not clear on how your responses apply to his situation. Are you suggesting he code a blog with Notepad? Surely not.

Now if the OP were wanting to do a simple static site I'd agree with you that wordpress is overkill. However, that's not the case so I still believe that for a blog, wordpress is by far the best option.

Thanks
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carlos123

17 years ago

Originally Posted by vagabondette

@ Carlos and Lloyd, the OP is creating a blog, not a simple static site so I'm not clear on how your responses apply to his situation. Are you suggesting he code a blog with Notepad? Surely not.

I hate to admit it but for someone who is not familiar with HTML, CSS, and PHP who wants a blog....WordPress is what I recommend they go with. It's just easier and faster to get them started on blogging right away.

But for someone who has any kind of initiative to learn on their own without becoming dependent on WordPress I would definitely recommend that they consider setting up their own blogging solution.

What is a blog?

I mean really? It is nothing more than a bunch of static posts that are dynamically taken from the MySQL database saving them in WordPress and displayed on the screen.

Why can't these posts be saved as simple text files in a directory? One post per file (text file). It's the old is it better to store such posts (i.e. blog posts)
in text files and access them through simple read commands or is it better to use the powerhouse of a database and read them from inside it's records?

May I suggest that unless one is inclined to create a blog with hundreds...no...thousands and thousands of posts that using MySQL indexing capabilities to store such blog posts is again...well..overkill. These days native directory find file functions within PHP are just as fast if not faster than accessing the same content through MySQL (unless we are talking thousands and thousands of blog posts which most will never have).

The main advantage I see to using WordPress for blogging is the plugins and the way that some limited SEO is done for you. But even there we are not talking science. I mean the basic SEO can easily be done on our own. We don't need WordPress to do our SEO for us. It's convenient but wholy uneccessary. Better I say to learn what is good SEO on your own and implement that such that you can insert it wherever you please without having to wait on WordPress to change it's SEO internals.

Not to mention that over reliance on WordPress makes our SEO dependent on someone else's idea of what should be SEO'd. Not good when it comes to refining things to achieve better SEO ranking in competitive niches.

Regarding the plugins...how many plugins does a blogger really need? I have been blogging for a little over a year on a site that has virtually no plugins at all. A very large forum that has a blogging capability as a side line. My readers are happy and while I could certainly use more capabilities I am happy to have the readers I do (though I will move to an independently hosted blog at some point in the next few months).

We don't need as many plugins as we might think is what I am saying.

I will shortly develop my own fast blogging PHP object class and use that instead of something like WordPress.

But as I said...for now, WordPress is good for blogging for most people.

Oh...one other thing while we are on the subject of WordPress. Most people don't realize this but every line of theme code developed by anyone MUST be licensed under the same license as WordPress itself. Legally speaking. I refer to the PHP code. Not the Javascript or the Images that might be used in a theme.

There are lots of companies selling themes that are in violation of the copyright that they must put their work under. Again legally speaking.

How does the thought of having your code be something that must be licensed for all the world to use freely under the GPL sound to you? Some have no problem with that. Sometimes I don't either. But if you are dependent on WordPress you don't have any choice in the matter. I don't like that.

I like having choice. I like freedom to do with my code what I wish to do with it. Which means writing my own or providing my code to others under a license that is very liberal and allows them freedom without forcing them to consider every derivative work based on my code classes to be mine in some way.

Having said all this let me just add that I am not anti-WordPress per se. Anymore than I am anti-Drupal, anti-Joomla, or anti-anything else. What I am anti-against is the notion in so many people's heads that WordPress is the next best thing since sliced bread for the creation of static sites and blogs.

It isn't.

I am against going along with the flow of using WordPress just because everyone else is. Most people use WordPress blindly. Just because others are without hardly thinking of the possible negative side to a WordPress install.

I believe in using tools where they are most useful and with a view to the long term benefits or lack of benefit. In my case I just don't see what all the WordPress rah, rah is all about to tell you the truth and speak against it when I see the WordPress cheering going on. But I also have to keep in mind that I can code stuff on my own and do so very well. Not everyone can do that.

So WordPress has it's place. It's just not for me and I generally advise against it if one can use something like my PHP code classes to accomplish the same thing more securely and much faster with less hassle.

Carlos

Thanks

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shahz

17 years ago

I can't believe there are people who actually hate Wordpress? And the best part is, asking for a "simpler" system that can "blog" and "not Wordpress". I really had a nice laugh, seriously. Wordpress is like the simplest thing ever made in the internet world, yet so sophisticated for any complex usage.

I've made more than 250 Wordpress themes so far, and actually, from what I have learnt form my clients are, that they don't really understand what they expect from Wordpress and how to actually accomplish what they really want. Believe it or not, some of them don't even know what is the difference between pages and posts. In fact, I believe many people using Wordpress here also don't know this simple fact. Thing is, many people know what Wordpress can do, when they hear from others and they just want things to work for them without much effort. This is totally wrong. Just because Wordpress has SEO plugin, everyone says they want to use Wordpress for all of their products - when they don't even understand the perfect function of SEO and how to deliver it.

I would say, don't blame the system if you don't know how to use it. If you have spent money on it and did not conduct your research on it, it was indeed your fault. You should first make friends with Wordpress before you went out and seek for coders to develop your Wordpress too. Oh, and you should also have hired EXPERTS who might be higher in price, but understand Wordpress inside out - rather than just hiring some cheap coder who is new to the scene

Just my two cents. No hard feelings. Cheers~

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carlos123

17 years ago

Originally Posted by TheLimeDesign

You should first make friends with Wordpress before you went out and seek for coders to develop your Wordpress too. Oh, and you should also have hired EXPERTS who might be higher in price, but understand Wordpress inside out - rather than just hiring some cheap coder who is new to the scene

Kinda defeats the purpose of WordPress don't it? I mean to have to go find coders of any sort at all (whether expert or not) to help you use it I mean.

It's supposed to be so easy to use that we don't need coders. Yet in actual fact most people who want to change anything in the source code are hopelessly lost such that hiring an expert is a given.

PHP is hard enough for most people. Understanding the way WordPress codes their PHP is even worse since their code does not exactly stick to standard PHP practice in some areas. Even I, a PHP coder, had a hard time understanding their code initially! It's like they tried to dummy proof it but in doing so they actually made it harder to understand.

The supposed ease of use only comes into play if you want the most minimal of plugins, don't want to change anything in any theme such as headers and footers, and if you can get away without having to update WordPress as often as it might be needed. That's assuming you can make it through installing it (which isn't bad at all if you install it through a shared host into exactly the directory they want the installation to go in...you won't have to install it yourself in most cases). Installation is a breeze for those who know anything about how web things work. For those who don't...forget it. They will need to hire an expert.

Oh and WordPress doesn't come security hardened out of the box. You may need to hire an expert to security harden it too so that it doesn't end up being hacked by some script kiddy out for a joy ride.

And I forgot to mention that you will likely need an expert too to help you install a cache system to have WordPress avoid hogging system resources (if you install WordPress on your own system for local web development before uploading changes to a hosted copy...if you don't know what in the world I just said...just ignore this paragraph). I mean after all it makes something like 20 MySQL calls for every page that is displayed (more if you use plugins that are heavy MySQL users).

Carlos

Thanks

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addison2015 17 years ago

Thanks for this huge information,i have got a lot of help by reading this.
Thanks
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shahz 17 years ago

Carlos, you have a point there. However, if you come to think about it, everything in this internet world need a little practise before you could actually use it for your own. Even Wordpress itself, you need to learn the installation procedure itself first before it will even be installed on your host. Sounds like a small step, but remember, you went through the process too once ago (creating a database, adding user, giving it permissions, etc). That is the minimal part you need to know about Wordpress. If you want to know more, you will have to learn it. If you don't want, you can hire a coder. That's why I said you need to hire a professional if you don't want to understand the easy system. People are lazy (period)

As far as the coding is concerned, it is actually a lot simpler than having to build up a whole blog system for yourself. It does minimize PHP coding drastically and in fact, if you understand the basics, you don't really need to even learn PHP itself. I started off with Wordpress before I ventured into PHP. I know it sounds funny, but that's what I did. And I didnt really had that much problem learning. Of course, it took my time and what not, but you have to give to gain.

If you're just talking about a minimal blog system custom made, chances are it might get hacked a lot easier than Wordpress. Although that does depend on how deep is your understanding on the program side and back end processing of your blog. But seriously, why re-invent the wheel?

Just my two cents.
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Here's Why To Avoid Wordpress

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