WordPress - at 30,000 feet

what role does it have in your toolkit?

[lorax]

Personally, I like WordPress because it's easy to get setup, skinned, and to teach the client what they need to know to get going. A solid tool for getting any business started online. But it's not the end game by any means in my way of thinking.

In fact, I often school my clients this is just a waystation along the road in their growth. When their cash flow and online activities support it, we'll advance them to the next level. What that level looks like depends upon several factors but I can tell you at each level there is an evaluation of both the tool to be used and the staff that will be involved with it.

WordPRess has many advantages as a tool for getting started but it also has it's limitations. How do you view WordPress in the larger context of the web and the advancement of your clients or your own websites?

[Kendo]

Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla are fantastic website apps. Each has hundreds of add-ons and professionally looking theme designs to cater for almost any type of web site. And you don't even need to know what html or ftp is to create websites that look like they were designed by an ad agency with a huge budget.

These content management systems (CMS) are very similar, and I am currently working with all 3 to set up some demo sites. One was easier to install, another easier to configure, and another I expect will be better overall for creation of static content.

My report about all 3 is plus, plus plus. How popular they will be with inexperienced designers will come down to the help and user-guides available and they all provide extensive help and user forums with lots of supporters eager to help. A user only needs to be able to find their way around, read and absorb.

For professional web designers, ie: those fluent in html, scripting and/or server side languages, these apps can make throwing together sophisticated looking web sites a quick and easy chore.

But where I am having a problem with them is that they do not allow much room for customisation. For example if I didn't want to use the Flash players that are available or if I wanted to add extra code to a page then it becomes a problem without creating a new plugin. Sure I can add the html to the page but that's only good for one page and it doesn't cater for delivering a choice of videos on the fly. Likewise if I need to add some extra code like a CSS or JavaScript between the head tags then those parts are applied to ALL pages.

To be able to inject code conditionally would solve my problem, but then I have to edit the templates to add those functions. A less experienced programmer will never find where to add the code and a newbie would have no hope.

I many respects it's like the difference between using spark plugs and transistorised ignition.

[MickeyRoush]

I used to work with both Joomla and WordPress. But after a couple of years and Joomla going from 1.5 to 1.6 to 1.7 and now 2.5 with a 3 version in development, I just decided to stick with WordPress. There is so much out there for WordPress right now.

I just wish WordPress would organize the admin directory like Joomla has theirs. I could secure it much easier.

Also at one time I had ten WordPress sites and one Joomla site. The Joomla site had more malicious attacks upon it than all ten WordPress sites.

[Kendo]

The Joomla site had more malicious attacks upon it than all ten WordPress sites.

Any idea where the weaknesses were?

I have sites on a server that I can't update because I can't update PHP without a rebuild, and I notice that on the Wordpress site they are saying that the previous version is too vulnerable.

[MickeyRoush]

Any idea where the weaknesses were?

I have sites on a server that I can't update because I can't update PHP without a rebuild, and I notice that on the Wordpress site they are saying that the previous version is too vulnerable.

Don't recall all of the targeted areas of a Joomla site. In fact I converted one site from Joomla months ago and I still see phishing for Joomla vulnerabilities.

[Kendo]

I still see phishing for Joomla vulnerabilities

I see these signs in all types of sites, even ones that I scripted myself. I've had a play with some apps of the type that may be responsible for the nuisance and they are potent... imagine typing in a key word and the app searches the web according to other preferences like "worpress", whether they require captcha etc, and building a list of sites to blast. I left one running for 4 days to see what it could so... I didn't submit on behalf of any site with a reputation that could be damaged.

Designed by clever people, they evaluate membership signups and web forms looking for weaknesses and the potential for success. It's like having a hacker at your front door. One site that I recently finished hadn't been finished enough and a bot was able to add backlink code to almost every item in the database. I've now closed the door but it was an interesting exercise seeing just how the bot managed to do it... it had to be logged in as a member.

[vnmichael]

I like wordpress beacause this is very easy for use and custom

[ergophobe]

Well lorax, you've heard this from me too many times, but here it is again.

I basically think there are three levels of sites

- fairly standard functionality: for me, Wordpress is the simplest, easiest way to get a site like this rolling, whether a blog, brochure or other similar site.

- a site with a fairly custom layout, structured data, complex interactions between the pieces, but not doing anything radically new or unique like inventing Twitter or Pinterest. In that case, it's Drupal for me. Much more powerful and flexible than Wordpress, but also more complex and more work.

- a site that is truly innovative. You're offering something really new, probably a service of some sort rather than a pure content site. In that case, you pull out your programming tools and roll your own.

[anallawalla]

I too have dropped Joomla in favour of WordPress exclusively, but I sometimes run into handicaps when I have to step back (or up to 30,000 feet).

For example, my business site was built with a Page metaphor and my business partner chose the template. This template has three boxes on the home page that are powered by 3 x Posts. The rest of the site uses Pages.

Being aware of the growing importance of mobile browsers (phone or tablet), I took a look and didn't like the tiny size (on a phone). So I loaded one of those mobile themes and to my disappointment, all it could see were Posts, i.e. my site was invisible other than the three post items.

What are others doing to make a WordPress site useful to all devices?

[lorax]

ergo, yeah. I'll still argue your second point though it's been a while since I sampled the Drupal development so I'm not sure. I do know I can pretty much make WP do anything I want it to and provide custom Admin tools to boot. What little I remember of the Drupal interface, it was harder to wrap my head around their approach. It could be just how I think that's the issue.

anallawalla, the Theme is the key. I've relied on theme that other's have built and taken the good and the bad they came with. But to deliver a truly compatable mobile experience, I'd prefer to build my own theme and trash all of the overhead that comes with most themes. I think the biggest trick here is the sniffer that determines what device is being used. That seems to me to be the biggest headache for developers right now - just know what device is in use and what it can or cannot display or process.

[ergophobe]

I just don't think that collecting, slicing and dicing complex structured data is in the bones of Wordpress and you'll always have to "make" it do you want. With Drupal + Views, it just does what you want. That said, Drupal has traditionally been a more abstract system - a framework really - and say meta titles, h1s, URLs, menu titles, etc don't necessarily have a defined relationship until you define it. This is now better in WP, but one of my big stumbling blocks there was the lack of abstraction.

Joomla... I've never really seen the value. I think these days, if Joomla can do it, so can WP. If you're going to bump up in complexity, might as well bump to Drupal which can really do things others just can't, at least not naturally and not in a logical way in the underlying database schema (at least in my experience).

On the second point (mobile), I would have to agree that the downside to a responsive design is that it hides cruft, but it still transfers it. So at low data speeds, you still pay that penalty.

[buet]

Joomlais best from my point of view. It has excellent CMS (Content Management System). The difference between Joomla and Wordpress is not significant but to create blog site Wordpress is good. And, to create website of better contents, Joomla is the best. I prefer Joomla and I love it.

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Posted by
Md Rubel Rana

" Do or Don't Do, There is no try"