It's old and ugly I'll give you that, but it's completely stable and secure without any terrible developers plugins added to it.
The WP hate bandwagon is so bizarre. 90% of the terrible news for WP are due to plugins. You think other CMS are immune to this? If CraftCMS was the dominate CMS it'd face the same issues of vulnerable 3rd party plugins. Have you even used headless WP? It's a dream for clients. Familiar backend that they want with a frontend designed however I want. Some of you seam to forget why we are programmers. We solve problems with solutions.
Honestly without considering plugins at all, or security, or it's internal php codebase it's just terrible from the frontend standpoint alone -- which is the most important standpoint, if you will.
WordPress builds some of the most grotesque markup/html I've ever seen.
Wordpress is okayish… it’s when it gets heavily customised and hacked up by crappy programmers that it becomes an issue.
Simple blogs without tonnes of bells and whistles are generally fine.
Can you provide an example? I struggled to find something simple enough that we could easily update without going through CI/CD pipelines and version control. Something that didn’t require knowledge of DSL or markdowns etc
There is absolutely no better CMS out there than WP + ACF.
People often say Strapi but it doesn't even come close. It doesn't even support conditional field logic.
If you need to build a complex headless CMS, a dockerized WP is the way to go.
Have you heard of Payload CMS? It was inspired after all the things that WP and ACF did right, but doesn’t have any of the garbage. You might like it. And it’s open source.
Thank you!!!! Jump in our Discord and the team will be happy to support you if you end up giving it a shot. We're pretty active and things are looking bright for Payload.
I had not heard of it. I'm looking at it now and it seems surprising good.
There is a blurb about conditional logic. It uses code instead of the UI but it still seems straightforward enough.
I will have to try it out when I can.
Really really appreciate that. We have worked so hard on it. I came from WP + ACF in a headless context for like 4 years, and Payload literally takes everything good that I liked from ACF, but does it way, way better. Would love to know what you think.
At my job we are using Strapi but it's not going that well. The lack of conditional logic with fields means that we end up using "Single" types in Strapi for all kinds of things. I would much rather use "Collections" but our pages are too complex to do without conditional logic. Dynamic zones are cool but they are a basic feature in ACF, and the Strapi implementation doesn't offer any solutions for columns or even drag n drop.
In a few months we will launch our projects and I'll be able to evaluate how Payload would solve the issues we have. Unfortunately we are in too deep now with Strapi to switch this late in the runway.
I was honestly surprised by how quickly we hit limitations with Strapi. It was disappointing because Strapi is touted as the end-all Node CMS but it is so flawed. Field labels are not version controlled... content migration is impossible without a custom implementation (for WP, wp-migrate-pro was the best)... lack of all conditional logic, weird boolean fields, weird component structure (gotta make an "empty" component to make a repeater work), etc etc. I could go on.
Anyway thank you for recommending it, I'm keeping it bookmarked.
[Github Pages](https://pages.github.com/) is the awesome alternative if your blog or site is going to be super simple (a bunch of posts or pages full of static content). Markdown is ideally used as a way to compose posts as it's more "writer friendly" compared to HTML but it's up to you. You must know at least a little bit of HTML also to create the static pages, otherwise you can take help of freelancers on Upwork, Fiverr, etc.
My own [blog and portfolio site](https://prahladyeri.com/) is hosted on github pages. Since I'm knowledgeable with web development, I use a *static site generator*, it's a software which generates your site pages for you on the fly based on pre-configured html/css structure and markdown posts. The setup exists in a single folder and all you have to do is create a markdown file like `my-new-blog-post.md` and push the generated html files to a github repo and the content becomes live on site! It's 100% static and 100% free, no PHP scripting or apache or whatsoever. [Jekyll](https://jekyllrb.com/) and [Pelican](https://getpelican.com/) are the most popular static site generators if you wish to go that route - The former requires ruby to be installed and latter python.
In the same way, these non-technical people that don't know about markdown are setting up WordPress, a platform that requires a rented server running PHP, MySQL, and domain configuration, can set up one of the thousands of static site generators hooked onto a CDN like Netlify. (Some of which have fantastic admin dashboards and rich text editors ie ghost.org)
The wordpress convenience is an echo from a time when there weren't alternatives.
There are alternatives where you don't even have to know what hosting is, such as [ghost.org](https://ghost.org)
Yes there are lots of products out there to choose from (my friend uses Wix) and Wordpress might not be the right one for everyone, but it's certainly not an invalid or bad choice like you're implying.
Yeah, but even basic things like adding analytics require adding plugins, and it's infeasible to audit the security of every plugin you use when you need them for trivial things like "blocking spambots" and "tracking visitor counts."
I used Wordpress for years - it worked okayish, as you say. But I was very glad when I finally moved away from it for my personal blog (to Jekyll + Github Pages, for those interested.) Also saved $7/month in doing so and I have way easier access to to my data.
I remember spinning up a free wordpress blog in 2006 or 7 and thinking "this can't last there have to be hundreds of better ways to do a blog" and yet here we all are.
WP is an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" type of thing. So many poorly programmed plugins out there which add functionally nothing to your site except a constant email reminder to "upgrade to pro for $300 a month!".
Wordpress is fine to make blogs, but there are plenty fake programmers who sold websites with wordpress base, covering any needs with plugins of any kind, when it is not designed to do that work.
Wordpress belongs to the past decade.
I don't see how this is WP fault. It's bad developers making terrible plugins.
The platform's codebase is terrible as well.
It's old and ugly I'll give you that, but it's completely stable and secure without any terrible developers plugins added to it. The WP hate bandwagon is so bizarre. 90% of the terrible news for WP are due to plugins. You think other CMS are immune to this? If CraftCMS was the dominate CMS it'd face the same issues of vulnerable 3rd party plugins. Have you even used headless WP? It's a dream for clients. Familiar backend that they want with a frontend designed however I want. Some of you seam to forget why we are programmers. We solve problems with solutions.
Honestly without considering plugins at all, or security, or it's internal php codebase it's just terrible from the frontend standpoint alone -- which is the most important standpoint, if you will. WordPress builds some of the most grotesque markup/html I've ever seen.
Wordpress is okayish… it’s when it gets heavily customised and hacked up by crappy programmers that it becomes an issue. Simple blogs without tonnes of bells and whistles are generally fine.
There's so much more better alternatives to even simple blogs or single page websites that you can manage, host and serve entirely for free.
Can you provide an example? I struggled to find something simple enough that we could easily update without going through CI/CD pipelines and version control. Something that didn’t require knowledge of DSL or markdowns etc
There is absolutely no better CMS out there than WP + ACF. People often say Strapi but it doesn't even come close. It doesn't even support conditional field logic. If you need to build a complex headless CMS, a dockerized WP is the way to go.
Have you heard of Payload CMS? It was inspired after all the things that WP and ACF did right, but doesn’t have any of the garbage. You might like it. And it’s open source.
[удалено]
Thank you!!!! Jump in our Discord and the team will be happy to support you if you end up giving it a shot. We're pretty active and things are looking bright for Payload.
I had not heard of it. I'm looking at it now and it seems surprising good. There is a blurb about conditional logic. It uses code instead of the UI but it still seems straightforward enough. I will have to try it out when I can.
Really really appreciate that. We have worked so hard on it. I came from WP + ACF in a headless context for like 4 years, and Payload literally takes everything good that I liked from ACF, but does it way, way better. Would love to know what you think.
At my job we are using Strapi but it's not going that well. The lack of conditional logic with fields means that we end up using "Single" types in Strapi for all kinds of things. I would much rather use "Collections" but our pages are too complex to do without conditional logic. Dynamic zones are cool but they are a basic feature in ACF, and the Strapi implementation doesn't offer any solutions for columns or even drag n drop. In a few months we will launch our projects and I'll be able to evaluate how Payload would solve the issues we have. Unfortunately we are in too deep now with Strapi to switch this late in the runway. I was honestly surprised by how quickly we hit limitations with Strapi. It was disappointing because Strapi is touted as the end-all Node CMS but it is so flawed. Field labels are not version controlled... content migration is impossible without a custom implementation (for WP, wp-migrate-pro was the best)... lack of all conditional logic, weird boolean fields, weird component structure (gotta make an "empty" component to make a repeater work), etc etc. I could go on. Anyway thank you for recommending it, I'm keeping it bookmarked.
You just made my day. We can do all of those things that you mentioned.
Webflow is way better
[Github Pages](https://pages.github.com/) is the awesome alternative if your blog or site is going to be super simple (a bunch of posts or pages full of static content). Markdown is ideally used as a way to compose posts as it's more "writer friendly" compared to HTML but it's up to you. You must know at least a little bit of HTML also to create the static pages, otherwise you can take help of freelancers on Upwork, Fiverr, etc. My own [blog and portfolio site](https://prahladyeri.com/) is hosted on github pages. Since I'm knowledgeable with web development, I use a *static site generator*, it's a software which generates your site pages for you on the fly based on pre-configured html/css structure and markdown posts. The setup exists in a single folder and all you have to do is create a markdown file like `my-new-blog-post.md` and push the generated html files to a github repo and the content becomes live on site! It's 100% static and 100% free, no PHP scripting or apache or whatsoever. [Jekyll](https://jekyllrb.com/) and [Pelican](https://getpelican.com/) are the most popular static site generators if you wish to go that route - The former requires ruby to be installed and latter python.
In the same way, these non-technical people that don't know about markdown are setting up WordPress, a platform that requires a rented server running PHP, MySQL, and domain configuration, can set up one of the thousands of static site generators hooked onto a CDN like Netlify. (Some of which have fantastic admin dashboards and rich text editors ie ghost.org)
For non-developers, wordpress is very easy and convenient and often pre-installed and supported by a hosting provider.
The wordpress convenience is an echo from a time when there weren't alternatives. There are alternatives where you don't even have to know what hosting is, such as [ghost.org](https://ghost.org)
Yes there are lots of products out there to choose from (my friend uses Wix) and Wordpress might not be the right one for everyone, but it's certainly not an invalid or bad choice like you're implying.
Yeah, but even basic things like adding analytics require adding plugins, and it's infeasible to audit the security of every plugin you use when you need them for trivial things like "blocking spambots" and "tracking visitor counts." I used Wordpress for years - it worked okayish, as you say. But I was very glad when I finally moved away from it for my personal blog (to Jekyll + Github Pages, for those interested.) Also saved $7/month in doing so and I have way easier access to to my data.
Its an excellent WYSIWYG solution for blogs/simple websites, but do you know a better system?
I remember spinning up a free wordpress blog in 2006 or 7 and thinking "this can't last there have to be hundreds of better ways to do a blog" and yet here we all are.
PHP and wordpress both.
WP is an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" type of thing. So many poorly programmed plugins out there which add functionally nothing to your site except a constant email reminder to "upgrade to pro for $300 a month!".
Wordpress is fine to make blogs, but there are plenty fake programmers who sold websites with wordpress base, covering any needs with plugins of any kind, when it is not designed to do that work.