[GeneralMaximus]

I know a lot of people dislike PHP and WordPress, but I haven't found _anything_ that comes close to it in terms of sheer extensibility and plugin ecosystem. There's a plugin for pretty much anything you might want to do with a platform. I even moved my personal Jekyll-powered blog to WordPress a few years ago.

My favorite thing about WordPress is that it's a known quantity. There's an easy to follow tutorial teaching you pretty much anything you might want to do with the software. PHP isn't the prettiest language, and WordPress itself feels a bit creaky at times. But it's a practical tool. It does the job, and does it very well.

Since I'm a JavaScript developer, I was optimistic about Ghost becoming a viable alternative to WordPress. Sadly, Ghost's plugin API still doesn't seem to be complete. Without that, it can't replace WordPress for anything besides basic blogging. That seems to be the niche the Ghost developers are interested in, though, so I don't think it's coming anytime soon.

I'm really excited to see this release. Gutenberg is certainly a step in the right direction for the editor, and I'm planning to upgrade all my websites over the next few weeks!

[joekrill]

You're absolutely right. The big issue (for me, at least), is that it's a security nightmare. At least last I used it. It seemed there were security exploits popping up every day. Either from the core codebase, or from some random plugin everyone seemed to be using. I think that was just the nature of how their plugin system works? I'm not sure if anything's changed, but _maintaining_ a WordPress install is not fun and requires constant - almost tiring - oversight.

[dpau]

I used to help artists with setting up Wordpress portfolio sites. But the constant maintenance required (updating Wordpress & plugins, making sure that all plugins are secure and maintained, and checking after each update to make sure nothing was broken), as well as the rise of platforms like Squarespace, Wix & Weebly, means that I no longer recommend Wordpress for those types of clients. Artists just want to show and sell their work, not deal with whether or not a plugin update is compatible with their version of Woocommerce.

[CM30]

Is this a WordPress thing or a software with a developer ecosystem thing?

Because that's always the catch with any script really. If you're using third party themes and plugins for anything, then you're putting trust in the developers of said themes and plugins that they know what they're doing coding and security wise.

The exact same situation is true of everything from WordPress to Drupal to vBulletin and XenForo to MediaWiki and Magento.

[lowercased]

With something like squarespace or wix (or even WP hosted), you're putting more power in the hands of the centralizing host, which is both limiting but also can reduce security issues.

The "sheer breadth of the ecosystem" in self-hosted WP is also where so many of the problems come in (compatibility between products, security issues, etc).

I'd argue it really is worse in the WP scene vs Drupal, partially because of the 'ease' of the code for newbs to get started. There's no culture of automated testing in the WP community at large, but some other platforms at least allow for that. There are people who write clean and well-tested WP products, but they're likely a minority, if you're looking at the ocean of stuff released over the last 5-10 years in the WP space.

[calibas]

It's not exclusively a Wordpress problem, but in my experience it's especially bad with Wordpress.

[Silhouette]

Indeed. Staff at the hosting service I use for professional purposes have always been very down on WP. My understanding from our various conversations is that for any systems where they were providing some sort of managed security service, it was a time sink to keep everything up to date. For any shared hosting systems where they weren't also managing the security, there would be frequent compromises and then that would get things blacklisted, so potentially other customers using the same shared resources could be negatively affected in at least two different ways. They don't seem to have become noticeably more positive about any of this in recent times despite the arguments about WP security being better these days, which suggests that there is still enough of a problem to be concerned about.

[photomatt]

Check out Jetpack, it can auto-update all your plugins, and has a "Rewind" feature with real-time backups so you can one-click take your site back to a previous state if anything didn't work.

[dazc]

Jetpack has some nice features, the comments form especially. It is, however, very bloated - especially since you'll often only use 2 or 3 features on any one site.

[photomatt]

Since Jetpack code is also what we run on WP.com (tens of billions of pageviews) it goes through a huge amount of performance tuning and optimization. The way modules work when you turn them off they don't have any overhead, similar to turning off a plugin. If you were using literally one thing it might feel like a lot, but as soon as you use 2-3+ things Jetpack does it's a lot more efficient than separate individual plugins to accomplish the same task.

[chiefalchemist]

Can you give a couple examples of when / how Jetpack has to be a single plugin, instead itself being a suite of individual plugins?

If the knock on that product is bloats, and the compromises adoption, how is X a benefit to those who refuses to abopt the whole alphabet?

[coldtea]

It's not like features you don't use slow you down, or that the < 1 MB of code they take on disk is important.

[ryanwaggoner]

I did a lot of WP dev from 2007 to 2011 or so, and I still run my businesses on Wordpress today. I hadn't really dug into Gutenberg yet, but I just played with https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ and I think a lot of people are overreacting. It's a very big change, but it feels like the right move for the future of Wordpress. I'm sure it's not easy to move a community forward in a new direction when there is a global ecosystem comprised of tens (hundreds?) of millions of websites, developers, designers, users, and entire companies invested in the status quo. I don't envy you!

Also, appreciate you still stopping into HN to chat :)

[chiefalchemist]

Hi Matt. Maybe not assume everyone here knows who you are? And instead at some point make note of the bias in your recommendation?

HN =/= WordCamp etc.

Tia :)

[goatherders]

As a free market tends to do, this has been largely solved. Perfect Dashboard, iThemes/Liquid Web and others now offer technology that auto updates core and plugins and rolls them back if anything breaks. 95% of the old pain of updating and patching is solved with these tools.

[sxp62000]

The only way to ensure your wordpress sites don't break is to reduce reliance on plugins. A decent host like DigitalOcean doesn't hurt either. Squarespace is ok for simple sites, but once clients start requesting additional features it becomes a nightmare.

[rob]

> but _maintaining_ a WordPress install is not fun and requires constant - almost tiring - oversight.

This isn't true. I've been running and managing 15+ WordPress websites for over 5 years now and not once run into any issues like you're describing, and I certainly haven't lost sleep or become 'tired' over it.

Using a good tool like ManageWP (or InfiniteWP, or any of the others, take your pick) makes managing multiple WordPress websites a breeze (e.g., it alerts you every morning with what updates are available), and with their paid backup/restore functionality there's really nothing to worry about if something did go wrong. Combine all this with a nice WAF or security plugin and you're fine. Or you can use a service like MalCare that combines both.

If you go months and years without updating, then yes you're asking for trouble like any other piece of software.

Too many people used WordPress over 10+ years ago and just stick to the same speech about PHP and WordPress and security and all that and how everything is so bad, and that a different CMS that nobody uses in a obscure language is sooo much better and secure (that won't be here in a couple of years in all likelihood.)

[jjeaff]

The fact that you even mention that you get security updates "every morning" is an indication of how much work keeping a WordPress site secure can be.

I think it is just wordpress' ubiquiti that has made it a security issue though. Attackers are quick to build exploit bots the moment a new vulnerability is found and they scour the web for unpatched sites.

So if you don't stay on your toes, you will get pwned sooner or later with a wp site.

[rob]

> The fact that you even mention that you get security updates "every morning" is an indication of how much work keeping a WordPress site secure can be.

Sorry for the confusion; I mean if there's a WP/Plugin/Theme update, I get notified every morning so I can go in and update (if needed.)

[1123581321]

Your last paragraph is wrong. WordPress is a headache for people who keep their CMSes up to date. The speech about why Wordpress is a poor choice for a lot of projects has changed over the last decade, but it’s still true to say — possibly truer than ever. PHP is a lot better than it used to be, but not Wordpress-style PHP. There are great CMS alternatives that are also written in PHP and are better, secure, and set up so that they will be around for years.

[AustinG08]

My answer to this problem has been the plugin Wordfence. It's primary feature is a WAF whose rules update continuously and intercepts every request. Having worked at several agencies I've seen and inherited many hacked sites. I have never had a site be infected with a clean install using Wordfence. knocks on wood

[dpkonofa]

Same here. WordFence has been a god-send. My agency offers fully custom sites, WordPress sites, and even builds on sites like Squarespace for people and I always differentiate them for clients. If it's a site that we'll end up managing, I always install WordFence and the developer license for it is incredibly reasonably priced. It's a 100% recommend from me for anyone considering it.

[fujipadam]

I use Wordfence and always thought it was good. But good to know that a lot of others find value in it too. Btw, looks like wordfence is getting killed with all the traffic from HN. Hopefully the increased sales will make it up to them :)

[mmaunder]

Wow. Founder here. Thank you!

[weci2i]

I'm a lone developer in a marketing agency. I manage hundreds of WordPress sites. Some are my own work, many are not. As someone who has inherited more than his fair share of compromised sites, thank YOU! WordFence is the immediate fix for 99% of the hacks I see. It stops malicious activity in its tracks until I can patch the issues. There are simply no other plugins even close to the quality of WordFence.

[AustinG08]

Well thank you. I'm a big fan of your newsletter as well :)

[tonyb]

I used to do sysadmin work as a web hosting company and security nightmare is exactly the phrase I think of when I think of WordPress.

Many mom and pop type businesses find the lowest cost web designer they can find to build them a WordPress site then get upset with the hosting company when "the server gets hacked" and their site is redirecting to a malicious site.

WordPress is certainly a powerful platform but the fact that it is so easy for someone to get started is also a weakness because those people don't understand it isn't just set it and forget it.

[skrowl]

Don't forget about the 'low cost web design' market. If you're buying a web design for south of $500, you're PROBABLY getting a WordPress next next finish install with a default template and some minor tweaking.

I've screened / interviewed so many jr web "developers" who don't actually know how to develop a web app and they claim that installing WordPress plugins is development experience.

[GeneralMaximus]

That's a fair point. I usually spend some time hardening my WordPress installs, and keep all of them updated. I also disable a few features of the WordPress dashboard, including updating WordPress core and installing themes/plugins. I do these tasks from the command line using WP-CLI.

This setup lets me do 99% of my everyday work using the WordPress UI. For the remaining 1%, I can SSH and use the command line. I've had a scare or two in the past, but in general my websites haven't been large enough to be lucrative targets. Maybe someone who's running larger blogs can chime in on the security issues.

If you want a one click solution, DigitalOcean's WordPress droplet has a lot of security stuff pre-configured for you. They even integrate fail2ban with the WordPress login screen, which is something I never even considered of doing.

[caseydm]

I agree security issues are the main drawback. This can be mitigated by using managed hosting providers. I've had several wordpress sites running on managed hosts for years with little oversight and no issues.

[deltron3030]

The main advantage of Wordpress and what makes it unique is that it‘s a real ecosystem, it scales from normal users, or business users/marketers who operate on a very high level, web designers, down to full stack developers and infrastructure devs, covering the whole business - design - dev continuum.

There‘s like a guaranteed influx of new clients downstream, who start small with a site builder, and get snatched up as clients as they grow.

Other “competing“ solutions just don‘t support a similar continuum in their ecosystems. Either they‘re missing the “normal people DIY level“, like most JS and Jamstack solutions, and/or they miss the lower levels and have proprietary hosting and devops solutions.

Having this continuum or diverse market also means that the‘re many people depending on that ecosystem, trying to increase the influx of new people. Not only to the level they operate on, but also the top non dev level. Normal people who ask experts (devs) for advice get directed towards WP as a result.

It‘s basically self promotional.

[ryanmccullagh]

> There‘s like a guaranteed influx of new clients downstream, who start small with a site builder, and get snatched up as clients as they grow.

I like your point here, can you elaborate?

[stevenicr]

There's also a lot of situations where updates can break custom themes or other custom code. Sometimes it's an old plugin that is left not-updated that causes a break or a hack and the site is broken. Many times these are setup and look nice for the client, by someone who is not maintaining any longer.

Then the site breaks they go online looking for help. This is not always a wordpress fault, sometimes it's a plugin issue for example.

However with the Gutenberg thing being forced in, I expect there will be a lot of broken custom themes and lots of people without backups. If their site is set to auto update core, there may be lots of work in the coming weeks.

I'm glad WP is not abandoned, but again (for the umpteenth time) wish new features were added as plugins and not forced into core. Akismet is added in backend as a plugin for people who want to use it, but it's not running by default during an update (as far as I can remember) for example.

At least automattic had notices in the backend dashboard warning about a new editor coming - not sure the notice warned that it may break some custom things - not that the average client would know that they have a custom thing.

Should be an interesting few weeks ahead.

[deltron3030]

People who outgrow the solutions they‘ve built themselves, and then look for better designs, custom plugins, hosting etc. and fall into the hands of businesses that provide those solutions. And these businesses fall themselves into the hands of other businesses further down the WP food-chain.

The “guarantee“ comes from the growth hacking minded ecosystem. People who set up their own WP businesses read up about it and usually follow the advice they find, what plugins to use, how to FB ads etc.

[folkrav]

> I know a lot of people dislike PHP and WordPress, but I haven't found _anything_ that comes close to it in terms of sheer extensibility and plugin ecosystem. There's a plugin for pretty much anything you might want to do with a platform. I even moved my personal Jekyll-powered blog to WordPress a few years ago.

That's exactly what I dislike about WordPress. Yes, it's extensible, yes, it has a shit ton of plugins, but it's also exactly why it's so unsecure, slow and bloated. People want to do with WordPress things that it _should not be doing_. It's a CMS, but its blog engine roots still show to this day.

> My favorite thing about WordPress is that it's a known quantity. There's an easy to follow tutorial teaching you pretty much anything you might want to do with the software. PHP isn't the prettiest language, and WordPress itself feels a bit creaky at times. But it's a practical tool. It does the job, and does it very well.

It's a very decent blog or simple presentational site engine, but as soon as you stray too far from its base functionality, you end up stuck with shit plugins that break every couple of updates. Their biggest multi-lingual plugin (WPML) slows down every request by a full second just by turning on the plugin. Yeah, you can optimize some settings and gain some of it back, but almost nobody does. Access to tutorials is nice, but the vast majority of them are actually garbage and filled with bad practices.

> Since I'm a JavaScript developer, I was optimistic about Ghost becoming a viable alternative to WordPress. Sadly, Ghost's plugin API still doesn't seem to be complete. Without that, it can't replace WordPress for anything besides basic blogging. That seems to be the niche the Ghost developers are interested in, though, so I don't think it's coming anytime soon.

The thing is, people want a new WordPress. But a new "CMS that does everything" is bound to have the same issues : being tolerable at most things, but not very good at anything.

Disclaimer : I worked at a web agency for some time where half the sites were WP. People want things done with WordPress because they know the admin panel, then get surprised when their site ends up being a huge bloated hack that holds together with duct tape. Oh, and Jesus Christ does it get hit by bots all the freaking time...

[justinator]

Ever try redesigning a Wordpress site?

All those plugins are just a Big Ball of Mud, and trying to figure out how to apply a design to it, without breaking everything is kind of impossible. Change a theme? Lose settings, styles, major layout choices, menu locations. I can go on.

You basically have to develop your theme, apply it to the LIVE site, and fix the fires you find. Maybe a needed plugin now isn't compatible with whatever tech the new theme brings in. Well, you're hosed.

This is fine if you're just a blogger, but if you're running a business off your Wordpress site, it's a complete disaster. Like - we hosed a live Wordpress site simply by making duplicate dev site. I don't know how I'm supposed to work with that sort of environment.

But any suggestions are welcome.

[coldtea]

>Ever try redesigning a Wordpress site?

Yes, me and tons of others people over the years.

>* All those plugins are just a Big Ball of Mud, and trying to figure out how to apply a design to it, without breaking everything is kind of impossible. Change a theme? Lose settings, styles, major layout choices, menu locations. I can go on.*

Depends on how you wrote the theme (or which theme you've bought) and what you want to change. Like on any other platform. It could also be a totally seamless experience. If your whole IA was based on the way the theme did things (custom post types, meta boxes and so on), then you need to port that too.

[dawnerd]

We do themes semi frequently enough to have a sort of process down. Never any problems here really. We just opt to not use much of the Wordpress ui helpers and make sure we’re not using plugins that generate their own ui. Then again they mostly end up being hosted with Wordpress VIP and they hold everything to a fairly high standard.

I’ll admit though, it’s a bit weird having a prod and dev environment with how many tweaks Wordpress can have. Haven’t really come up with a good solution for that.

[lucideer]

> I know a lot of people dislike PHP and WordPress, but I haven't found _anything_ that comes close to it in terms of sheer extensibility and plugin ecosystem

You're right about everything there except one word: "extensibility".

Wordpress has a comprehensive hooks system that makes it seem like it's very extensible, but that's only there to make up for the godawful mess that is the codebase itself. PHP (which is a fine language and owes much of its bad press to wordpress tbh), like most modern programming languages, is designed for building easy to extend applications, where devs can leverage simple, testable, reliable language features instead of hooking into the tacked on callbacks API of a core app that's so inconsistent that you never really know for sure if anything's going to work long term.

There's three types of devs who interact with WordPress:

1. people who build "spec-and-deliver" sites for clients, with no ongoing maintenance, and love wordpress because they never see the mess their website turns into.

2. plugin devs who typically don't have to deal with client website maintenance, and definitely don't have to deal first-hand with their own plugins' incompatibilities with other plugins

3. people who have spent time actually maintaining wordpress sites and never want to touch it again

4. (non-dev) amateur bloggers who throw up an install with some plugins, and never look at code, and never update, and don't need any features, and are really the only appropriate audience for this platform... until their site gets hacked for the 15th time...

[tasuki]

> PHP (which is a fine language

No it isn't. The language itself is awful. The PHP ecosystem is great though: easy deployments, good dependency management, healthy community, and the most pleasant framework I've ever worked with - Symfony.

[k__]

"I was optimistic about Ghost becoming a viable alternative to WordPress. Sadly, Ghost's plugin API still doesn't seem to be complete."

To me, it felt like Ghost is simply WordPress in JavaScript and I don't think anyone wants that.

Why switch away from PHP just to get the same things and as you mentioned not even get the same things but less?

Ghost, Sails, Ember, they all try to emulate principles from projects of the past.

Gatsby, Amplify and React are doing things differently and aren't copies of Wordpress or Rails, that's why changing to them is a good idea if the different approaches are worth it. Not just because it's cool to use JavaScript...

[agumonkey]

Just don't look into plugin sources. Maybe it improved since, but in 2011 it was frightening. hundred line long nested for loops with an almost exact copy just below but not really. Then commented code in the published source. In a top 20 plugin at the time.

[lucideer]

Still the same

[agumonkey]

Even after the symfony bundle era ? I was hoping too much maybe.

[shortformblog]

I like the work Ghost has done, but I'm moving away from it in favor of Craft, in part because I feel like my needs are moving faster than that project is.

I think you'd find Craft (https://craftcms.com/) to cover most of your needs and desires from the ecosystem standpoint. It's PHP-based but it's also well-designed and its approach allows for the kind of flexibility that you have to work really hard to get elsewhere.

I was able to set it up with a Markdown editor, shortcodes, Imgix, and a bunch of other must-haves for my use case very quickly thanks to the existing plugin community. And the issues I did run into, I found help from the community almost immediately.

The only downside, really, is that its license isn't open in the way WordPress is, though it's free to use for single-user projects.

[mrunkel]

If you're a PHP dev looking for a good solid CMS framework that (in my opinion helps you out tremendously while also staying out of the way). Check out kirby at https://getkirby.com.

Has a very large plugin eco system and a no database CMS system similar to jekyll/hugo.

[johnonolan]

John from Ghost here - Firstly, big congrats to WP team for launching 5.0!

We have lots of ideas around extensibility for Ghost, they just increasingly don't look very much like plugins. We've always been hesitant to ship something which developers would rely on and end up creating yet-another-janky-bloated-CMS, so we've admittedly held back on that front.

The thing about a lot of plugins is, the most popular ones feel like they really shouldn't be plugins. Many plugins are popular simply because they're things which should be in core, while others should simply be tutorials. You shouldn't need a plugin for good SEO, and you shouldn't need a plugin to insert a Mailchimp embed.

To that end we've got a large directory of integrations which show how to make 3rd party services work with Ghost: https://docs.ghost.org/integrations

As for the more advanced platform-specific functionality: I think the long term view of how all platforms will need to work looks a lot more like external APIs and microservices than locally installed hooks and filters.

[sparkzilla]

I'm not sure why you are "excited" to see this release. For those of us who create Wordpress sites for clients, this is a mess. A comparison of Gutenberg to any of the major Page builders (Visual Composer, Divi, Enfold etc.) shows that Gutenberg is simply not ready for production. Features are missing, and there simply isn't the finesse you get from a page builder.

Gutenberg should have been offered as an extension, leaving core Wordpress alone. Now, we are going into the situation where an inferior page builder is part of core. That can only cause trouble.

[dpkonofa]

I hate to start this off this way but this comment makes me feel like you're either a very novice WP user or simply a designer that likes to advertise themselves as a dev but doesn't actually do a lot of coding. Divi and Visual Composer are both absolute messes from every aspect except for ease of use and they're incredibly bloated even for simple page layouts. Everything ends up as an inline style, the actual load time for pages is astronomical, and making any kind of theme changes are impossibly inconsistent because these page builders inextricably link all styles to the HTML instead of in proper CSS where they belong.

Gutenberg, on the other hand, while not perfect, is several times better than these systems, in my opinion. There's still some messiness to it but it's much easier to set up a theme for a client and have comfort that, when you come back to edit something for them, they haven't borked it all to hell requiring you to dig through a slow and clunky interface just to reset a font-color.

[sparkzilla]

The whole point of WordPress is that you don't need to do much coding, so that point is moot. The vast majority of WordPress developers are designers or non-technical people who either don't know how to code, or who can hack a bit of code now and then.

When I make a site for a client I have to balance many options 1) how fast can I do it 2) including how many bits and bobs do I have to add in to even make it work 3) What it will look like 4) will the client be able to update it afterwards. Speed and underlying tech is way down the list.

I generally use Enfold [1] to build client sites. Divi's interface is too complex and slow to navigate. VC is faster, and I have used it on occasion. Gutenberg also has a slow interface. Gutenberg also requires the download of loads of blocks or block packages, which surely bloat the page, and cause confusion. I've tried Atomic blocks [2] etc, which only works well when you pair it with the Atomic Blocks theme. But sometimes I might need a different blocks. So now, you've now got multiple hero sections, each with different parameters, css and coding. That's bloat and inconsistency.

Gutenberg simply doesn't give designers the level of control over existing page builders. Read this comparison of Gutenberg vs Elementor [3]. I don't use Elementor, but the author concludes -- like me -- that Gutenberg is no match for exiting page builders. To paraphrase, he concludes that Gutenberg is for unsophisticated users who are creating single page layouts with low precision.

BTW, I don't know what themes or clients you have, but Enfold allows all the elements to be locked so that the clients can't mess with the layout. It's also very easy for them to login and see the page structure so that they know where they are. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's far better than Gutenberg.

IMHO, instead of finding out what developers actually wanted and were using, WordPress decided to roll its own system, which would be fine if it was optional. But, now that it's core, it's just an inferior, anti-competitive PITA.

[1]https://themeforest.net/item/enfold-responsive-multipurpose-... [2]https://wordpress.org/plugins/atomic-blocks/ [3]https://createandcode.com/gutenberg-vs-elementor-comparison/

[dpkonofa]

>The vast majority of WordPress developers are designers or non-technical people who either don't know how to code, or who can hack a bit of code now and then.

That's what I thought. There's a reason why WordPress has a reputation for being insanely insecure and a terrible platform and it mostly has to do with the fact that it's made things easy for people who have no idea what they're doing. Existing page builders allow you to make something easily while completely ignoring the affect of page load times, proper syntactic code, and quality. They're meant for people who don't invest the time to actually learn what they're doing so they can throw crap together that they can charge clients who don't know any better.

[photomatt]

We had it as an extension for a year and a half, and in that time it became the fastest growing plugin in WP's history. User tests also showed significant issues with our current editor approach and much better results with Gutenberg enabled, that's why some hosts have had it on by default since the summer.

I agree it's not for everyone, that's why there's an opt-out, but it is an improved experience for the vast majority of current and potential future users. It's shipped, and now we can continue to iterate on it.

[sparkzilla]

It might be fine for casual users, but it's really not good enough for those using WP to make sites for clients. That said, I wish you the best of success with it, and will continue to evaluate it as you progress.

[dpkonofa]

If Gutenberg isn't an improvement for you with regard to client sites, then you're not actually developing your client sites correctly per the WordPress specs. You're relying on builders to do too much of the work for you.

[sparkzilla]

Be serious. If I use a page builder, such as Enfold or Visual Composer, I can get a client site completed in much less time, with a consistent design, and with more precision than with Gutenberg. You're saying that I should use Gutenberg because simply because it is the WordPress Spec. But, as it stands, Gutenberg is simply inferior to page builders. IMHO that goes against the ethos of WordPress, which was always for extensibility i.e I can take my choice of competing plugins, themes and page builders according to the needs of my client and the project. Now, it looks increasingly like we're stuck with a system that is slower to use, delivers imprecise results, requires the download of overlapping blocks, is barely out of beta, AND that will destroy competition in the space. Even if it conforms to the "WordPress specs" that's not a good result.

[stevenicr]

If Gutenberg isn't an improvement for you with regard to client sites - NO, it is not an improvement for 50 out of 50 of our client sites. Not one person cares not 1 iota about it. It may actually break some of the custom themes some of them run, so it's the opposite.

"correctly per the WordPress specs" - this is like windows rolling out an update that breaks atom, sublime text, and others that were working well. Seriously.

We don't rely on page builders on 100 out of 120 sites. Some sites do have custom themes that incorporated rows for design, which may break with this update.

The sites that did rely on page builders were working great and had no need for Guten.

[stevenicr]

I wish people in the tech bubble would realize that "why there's an opt-out" - is like saying 'you can stop the beating by.." - why not just make it 'opt in" - when there is consent, side effects can be considered easier, and then there is more of a chance someone actually knows how to opt out / change the consent of this thing running.

[liveoneggs]

advertising it to everyone probably helped :)

[noeltock]

> For those of us who create Wordpress sites for clients, this is a mess

We use Gutenberg extensively with clients (and have for some time), so I don't think that blanket statement is fair. There's been a learning curve but the business value speaks for itself at the end of the day.

Agree with @photomatt's comments.

[IncRnd]

Thank you for pointing this out. We are in a simlar position. Have you noticed any compatibility issues between Gutenberg and VC?

[ltrcola]

I've had the misfortune of having to maintain and extend a new WP install now, where we used Umbraco before. Literally everything about Umbraco was better except for two things: 1) the requirement to run on Windows 2) the number of available plugins was smaller

The number of plugins thing is offset by the reality that Umbraco plugins were generally higher quality across the board.

What you gain, though, is a sensible way to create a content structure/ component blocks and templates that work in a standard MVC way with a data model and views. WordPress on the other hand... I want to cry every time I look at a WordPress template, even when using improvements over the core like Roots provides with Bedrock and Sage. It's all imperative functions that modify state, global vars and functions, exceptions to remove all sorts of random bundled scripts and an outdated version of jQuery, just barf-ola.

And that's not even getting into the fact that by default it runs basically everything on every single request unless you install a third party caching plugin. Good luck loading config values or whatever on "startup" because the concept doesn't exist. Umbraco had a much higher level of performance out of the box, and could use generally the same additional caching techniques and performance techniques if you want to.

I truly think these types of CMSes are on their way out, as they tie the presentation layer directly to content management. The future, to me, is looking like Headless CMSes linked to a static site generator like Gatsby or React Static.

[KaoruAoiShiho]

Isn't drupal better though if you're just wanting to take advantage of its API despite the php-ness?

[spraveenitpro]

Gutenberg Rocks!!

[pmlnr]

WordPress is very nice until you hit a niche problem: the media library has a lot of hooks that are not applied on the backend (and the media library itself is seriously dated); the XML library that can't handle a newline before <xml; while there are option for custom comment types, it's not actually supported; the REST API is a gigantic security hole; no database abstraction layer; etc.

I'm having high hopes for the ClassicPress fork to eliminate these bumps, but the future of WordPress.org will be interesting, especially that gutenberg breaks backwards compatibility, which breaks a lot of plugins, meaning you either go Classic Editor and your plugins, or Gutenberg and, maybe, some of your plugins.