What Are You Doing Right Now

CloudKnight

dave_c

@scottalanmiller
You are technically right.
Point 3 tries to imply that WordPress is an ecosystem. One in which even quality plugins have problems. In this case, the plugin is well developed, known and used. Still crashed the site on an update

To be fair, I do not know the details of the crash . I just investigated and found that disabling the plugin solves the problem. But it seems like the plugin is necessary to continue the design of the site. Again, Catch 22

scottalanmiller

@dave_c said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller
You are technically right.
Point 3 tries to imply that WordPress is an ecosystem. One in which even quality plugins have problems. In this case, the plugin is well developed, known and used. Still crashed the site on an update

Well, only so good. You can say it is an awesome plugin, but it isn't that awesome. That's it's good, sure, I'll buy that. But under no condition can you blame the platform for a bad choice, decision, or problem from the ecosystem. No amount of software written to run on Windows being bad is a reflection on Windows. Yes, it can be seen as "part of the ecosystem", but that's not a reflection on the platform.

Bottom line, WordPress is stable and loads of the ecosystem is stable. It sounds like what you want is the "Apple Store" effect where the primary vendor blocks any software that they don't test and only sell you things that they want you to have.

scottalanmiller

@dave_c said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

To be fair, I do not know the details of the crash . I just investigated and found that disabling the plugin solves the problem. But it seems like the plugin is necessary to continue the design of the site. Again, Catch 22

Sure, but the Catch-22 is caused by something other than WordPress. Whoever is in charge of this site is responsible for creating (or allowing the creation) of the dependency; not Wordpress. This is not a problem that the rest of us are having, it's not a common one. We don't have a dependency on that plugin (I've never seen it in fact), and the plugin dependencies are a top decision factor in any design decision.

There is an issue here, yes. But that issue, the problem you are having, is in house on your end (and to some degree, with the plugin maker perhaps.) The issue isn't WordPress itself or even the ecosystem. It might be the designer, but someone had to hire that designer and approve their decisions. This is an IT task so whether IT itself or a shadow IT department, someone in IT over there is making calls that resulting in the issue that a bad plugin is now seen as a dependency.

dave_c

@scottalanmiller
Again, you are correct. I still don't like things WordPress does. Like storing URLs in the database. After using Craft CMS or ProcessWire WordPress does not make much sense

scottalanmiller

@dave_c said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller
Again, you are correct. I still don't like things WordPress does. Like storing URLs in the database. After using Craft CMS or ProcessWire WordPress does not make much sense

Where would you want them to be stored?

JaredBusch

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@StuartJordan said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

I'm not going to slag off Wordpress, I think it's good, you just need to make sure that you limit logins and keep it up to date. I use it myself and love what you can do with the platform.

And not add bad things on top of it. A bad theme or plugin is part of the code and going to break things.

We very carefully only use a few, tested, trusted, maintained plugins. Gotta keep it lean.

https://i.imgflip.com/2r8ewa.jpg

CloudKnight

@JaredBusch said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@StuartJordan said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

I'm not going to slag off Wordpress, I think it's good, you just need to make sure that you limit logins and keep it up to date. I use it myself and love what you can do with the platform.

And not add bad things on top of it. A bad theme or plugin is part of the code and going to break things.

We very carefully only use a few, tested, trusted, maintained plugins. Gotta keep it lean.

https://i.imgflip.com/2r8ewa.jpg

That top of his is defiantly looking outdated lol..

scottalanmiller

Someone put in a ticket for service, and when we called he said "I don't want any service" and hung up.

tonyshowoff

@dave_c said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller
Again, you are correct. I still don't like things WordPress does. Like storing URLs in the database. After using Craft CMS or ProcessWire WordPress does not make much sense

WordPress is far more database intensive than I like, there are cache plugins for that kind of thing though. There is a balance between being extendable and being ridiculous, they're getting better about just being extendable. Regardless, if you ever watch the queries on a typical front page load, it queries the same things over and over and over. Even without memcached/redis/whatever there are ways to deal with this, but again, if I try to empathise with them, maybe it's not an easy problem to solve without potentially breaking their plugin system in some way, at least for now.

I also don't like how they keep edit history, drafts, and published items in the same table making it grow massively.

Reid Cooper

URLs have to be stored somewhere, presumably. Whether in a relational database or a flat file database edited manually, results are more or less the same. But in a traditional, robust database there is more centralization of configuration and data so it is easier to backup and restore, manage, and so forth.

Obsolesce

@tonyshowoff said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@JaredBusch said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dave_c said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@StrongBad
Incomplete list in no special order

Wordpress:

If you update WordPress you risk breaking the site.

If you don't, you risk being hacked.

It is too big that the ecosystem is out of control.

Web developers with no idea:
4. They demand cPanel access. And the clients authorize that access (out of my pay grade)
5. The mess with DNS, really, why?
6. They choose poor plugins

About points 1 &2: Theory says WordPress is secure but plugins maybe not. So the problem is not WordPress and the solution is to choose good plugins. WordPress is so easy to use that point 3 is on spot. And then I fall on point 6 because everybody can be a WordPress developer/web master. Talk about Catch 22

Right now, I have a production web site down because the web developer insists on using a plugin that breaks the site. I already disabled the plugin twice.

Perhaps I am in the wrong industry, it is just that fell in love IT at first sight

I have never broken WP with updates.

Same here, they seem to be really good. Way, way better than, say, Windows. They "just work". I've been using WordPress for a really long time and support a lot of sites.

I hate WordPress but I've always praised both their reverse compatibility and their slow crawl toward proper design showing they at least, I think, have some understanding of how bad it is.

I only use plugins that are kept up-to-date. I only update WP once all plugins support the latest version. Any plugins that do not update in a reasonable amount of time after a WP update, I find a replacement plugin.

dave_c

@scottalanmiller
Got me again. Le me explain: There is a difference between storing

/media/image.png

and storing

http ://mywebsite.com/media/image.png
(space included on purpose)

I'm used to the first option.

In the end, liking WordPress or not might be a matter of taste. Going back to my original post: maybe neither, maybe both, I don't know

scottalanmiller

@dave_c said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller
Got me again. Le me explain: There is a difference between storing
/media/image.png
and storing
http ://mywebsite.com/media/image.png
(space included on purpose)

Where do you see it storing like that? Is that WordPress storing that, or is a plugin doing it? What's the scenario where you see that happening?

dave_c

@Obsolesce
Absolutely.
Here is the problem: I am in charge of a some client's servers: among those there is an inherited cPanel with many WordPress websites. In many cases the designers of the sites are no longer working with the company. So it is out of my control.

I have been moving everything to Linux without a Control Panel, updating WordPress & plugins, cataloging the obsolete plugins, etc. Maintenance work.

The website that caused my "hate" doubt is handled by some one else, someone without a clue. As the web site was down for too much time I was called to fix it. After fixing it, the web designer broke it again.

I am a developer and sys admin, not a web designer and I prefer ProcessWire or Grav than WordPress.

tonyshowoff

@dave_c said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

I am a developer and sys admin, not a web designer and I prefer ProcessWire or Grav than WordPress.

I get where you're coming from personally, because I am the same, primarily developer and I've had much of the same feelings, had to deal with the same tasks, and the results were basically the same.

scottalanmiller

@dave_c said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@Obsolesce
Absolutely.
Here is the problem: I am in charge of a some client's servers: among those there is an inherited cPanel with many WordPress websites. In many cases the designers of the sites are no longer working with the company. So it is out of my control.

I have been moving everything to Linux without a Control Panel, updating WordPress & plugins, cataloging the obsolete plugins, etc. Maintenance work.

The website that caused my "hate" doubt is handled by some one else, someone without a clue. As the web site was down for too much time I was called to fix it. After fixing it, the web designer broke it again.

I have a feeling that you ire is misplaced. It sounds like you have a solid problem here... a company that isn't managing things well, hiring people who don't know what they are doing, designers who are being sloppy....

You've got many people to be upset or frustrated with. Really clear failures. Solid, no real question problems. But instead of being upset with them, you are looking to WordPress which appears to be completely blameless in this scenario.

You could be upset legitimately with...

The business
Managers
The customer's IT
The designer
The plugin maker
Maybe even cPanel (just for being a pain)

There isn't anything wrong with being upset. But don't lash out at the innocent and spare the guilty.

dave_c

@scottalanmiller
It is all over the place.
wp_posts
wp_postmeta
etc.
I am 90% sure vainilla WordPress does that. That's the reason plugins like Better Search Replace or wp search-replace exist and are very useful. For example, moving from HTTP to HTTPS needs the URLs changed in the database

dave_c

@scottalanmiller
:grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: It seems like my small rant was taken too seriously.
Let me correct the sentence in the original post: maybe neither, maybe both, I don't care

It is just work and I am being paid to do it. And for that I am truly grateful.
As for the company, yes, that part of the company is a mess. I feel good knowing that somehow I am helping a little bit.
I am really not upset. I was just wondering

scottalanmiller

@dave_c said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller
It is all over the place.
wp_posts
wp_postmeta
etc.
I am 90% sure vainilla WordPress does that. That's the reason plugins like Better Search Replace or wp search-replace exist and are very useful. For example, moving from HTTP to HTTPS needs the URLs changed in the database

See, that's why I feel something is wrong. For us, it does not require that change. And we have a lot of different sites with different themes and such and we've never needed to make changes like that before.