[michaelpinto]

You know I started to dive back into WordPress very recently after a few years and there are a few things I noticed:

- Commercial themes are the selling point of the WordPress ecosystem. The themes are what gets a user to use WordPress in the first place, because it solves a real world problem (examples: you need a portfolio site, you need an urban bar site or you need a real estate site).

- That said the quality of WordPress themes can be terrible. They can have conflicting plugins or terrible security holes. So the quality of the developer base is uneven at best (quite a few script kiddies).

- WordPress still feels like it's stuck in the year 2008. The usability has only grown more complex, yet the functionality feels stuck in the web 2.0 era.

- Automattic is not a unicorn, in fact I feel that it's doomed. Right now the open web feels like it's in deep trouble, and WordPress just isn't mobile first platform. This should have their management in panic mode, but it does not.

- For example there should be a way to wrap a WordPress site into an app. Yes there are third party solutions that do this, but Automattic should be doing that. In fact WordPress should have done that in say 2010.

- There are also a number of third party plugins that allow you to create a web page sort of like InDesign, but they're all terrible hacks. Again this is something that Automattic should do, but doesn't.

- Even the branding of WordPress is a convoluted mess. I find myself time and time again explaining the difference between WordPress.com and self hosting the software itself.

So in the end you have a product that is too complex for a normal person (this is why squarespace or facebook pages do well) yet it's a platform that tech people feel is a bit of an old hack.

But what's sad to me is that this feels like a reflection of the dead end that the open web has become.

[kijin]

I couldn't care less about whether WordPress is a mobile-first platform or how easy it should be to wrap a WordPress site in an app. Most of that is presentation layer problem, which can and should be handled by individual themes and plugins. WordPress themes are incredibly powerful; they can do that and much more. The only part of the presentation layer that WordPress needs to concern itself with is the admin interface.

The "open web" might no longer be a cash cow worth billions, but a significant number of people still love to tinker with it and resist the trend of app-ifying everything. Most of them don't care whether they are worth billions, they care about being open and tweakable. If you don't, then you're simply not their target user.

[mtbcoder]

> The only part of the presentation layer that WordPress needs to concern itself with is the admin interface.

If only this were the case. WP's underlying processes and database structure are so unbelievably stunted and entirely coupled to the core WP application, that to do something as simple as pull rendered posts from the database generally involves performing a series of SQL gymnastics just to retrieve the relevant data. Not to mention all of the convoluted WP functions that are needed to render the final content snippet.

[mikeschinkel]

There are pros and cons to WordPress' database structure. While it may take "a series of SQL gymnastics just to retrieve the relevant data" it's database structure is incredibly resilient to the changing requirements of different users. A "better" database structure would almost certainly be too fragile to meet the needs of as many users as WordPress does.

[michaelpinto]

So then you're agreeing that Automattic isn't a unicorn, and you also hinting that they should be a non-profit. And if that's the case and if that's what they want to do (wikipedia is that) then you're right. But I don't get the impression that Automattic views itself as a non-profit, but maybe they should.

[kijin]

Contrary to what some people in the startup scene would like to believe, there are many business models in between "unicorn" and "non-profit". There's nothing wrong with being a regular hornless horse as long as you're making enough money to live a comfortable middle-class life.

[michaelpinto]

Yes but the article clearly refers to them as a unicorn.

[kijin]

Just because you disagree with the article and I disagree with you doesn't mean that I agree with the article on that specific point.

(I think you're right about WordPress being a primarily Web 2.0 platform. My disagreement with you is that I don't think there's anything wrong with being a Web 2.0 platform.)

[puranjay]

If you wanted to know how big of a mess WordPress is, just take a look at all the successful businesses that have been built just to explain how to use WordPress.

The WordPress UI hasn't changed in the 6 years that I've been using it. Everything about it feels "heavy".

Not a good experience, honestly.

Just that the free alternatives (Ghost, for example) are even more technically challenging.

[mikeschinkel]

Having businesses that are built just to explain software is not a sign of failure, it is a sign of success. Microsoft Windows has the same and no one could say that they were not a success for over two decades. It means that WordPress has "crossed the chasm" into the "early majority."