[EvanAnderson]

I remember when I looked at Wordpress for the first time, like 15 years ago, and was baffled that a dev/test/prod workflow involved copying filesystem content, database content, and changing URLs that got saved in the database. I couldn't believe what a steaming pile of garbage architecture it was.

Fast-forward to last year and I'm asked to look at it again. Surely, I think, in the ensuing time somebody would have rectified the architectural stupidity. It's a wildly popular platform, I thought. Surely it can't still be so terrible...

Fool me twice, I guess. >sigh<

[withinboredom]

> a dev/test/prod workflow involved copying filesystem content, database content, and changing URLs that got saved in the database.

This just sounds like deploying web software. You always have static assets that need to be deployed, the code/binary itself, and database migrations.

[EvanAnderson]

The "copying filesystem content, database content" part of that is perfectly sane. I should have phrased that better.

The insane part is the search-and-replace on the database backup to find hard-coded URLs referencing the environment's hostname. That's ridiculous. It speaks to the lack of serious operational experience that went into building the software.

[withinboredom]

Ah. That’s like a 15-line rite-of-passage plugin you write once and never have to worry about it again. Filter content going into the database and use relative uri for the same site. Configure everything else via environment variables.

I moved away from Wordpress altogether earlier this year because I got tired of babysitting MySQL.