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120 Comments

What don't you like about WordPress?

Hi everyone, I am newbie to this community :)

I am personally working a CMS project to make a better blogging platform, that doesn't require much plugins & not go data blote as wordpress does.

And am using Laravel as base! tell me your thoughts on it too. I have already included things like SEO tools, Opengraphs, Blog & Comment management, PWA and so on many essential features of CMS, which in Wordpress requires plugins to do.

So share with me your experience on Wordpress, like what you love about Wordpress & what you don't like about Wordpress! Cheers!

P.S : It's been 3 years (almost) since I asked this question and just after this healthy discourse, I decided to drop the original Idea - following that it wasn't addressing the core issues and it's been 3yrs and many things has changed, technologically speaking. Thanks for this great discourse.

  1. 7

    Bloat, plugins, security issues, database backups, hosting and the list goes on and on.

    What is your unique selling point? You get all of that with a hosted version of https://wordpress.com/ i believe

    1. 5

      WordPress is not bloated or slow. People make it bloated and slow.

      As the any CMS gets more attention, people are more likely to want to hack it and find loop holes. If @aryabh builds a very popular CMS, he'll have the same problem. The WordPress team is really good at releasing security patches.

      database backups have to happen in any application. So, I don't get that statement.

      I actually think hosting providers are one of the strong points for WordPress. The hosting providers make it so easy, you don't have to setup an apache or nginx server, you don't need to worry about setting up CDN or caching. They just do it for ya! And they all have PHP 7.x now, so it's really fast.

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        With website builders no need for backups.

        I recently tested 30 of the bigger WP hosting sites, page builders, plugins and the results didn't look good. I will be sharing soon.

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          Whether it's yourself doing the database backups, or the database provider you're using. Someone has to do backups. It sounds like you don't want to do it.

          Any page builder is gonna be tough. Because you're only gonna use a subset of the features but still load the entire assets. You can't make your cake and eat it at the same time. Pick one or the other.

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            @rleija I agree with you! no matter how good the pagebuilder will be it will load entire asset! with that been said It's not like we can't make improvement in it.

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          Thanks @volkandkaya, I will be looking to it.

      2. 1

        @rleija I am not saying and I never said that wordpress itself is a vulnerable, wordfence almost(I am saying 'almost' coz I have never read such articles) never posts saying "wordpress's new update make it more vulnerable" but can't say same for the plugin! every week or so! there's post saying due to this plugin's vulnerability many site's data in-danger!

        And as for People make it bloat! seriously you make it sound like wordpress itself have most need features like in-built seo system with controllable sitemap or WAF or Pagebuilder (please don't say gutenberg, it's no match for Elementor Visual Editor) and then also People are are buying premium plugins like Wordfence, Yoast Premium, Schema Premium or Pagebuilders ! if that's the case then ya! people make it bloat!

        Also not every hosting provider has those points like in-built CDN or caching or database caching with redis or memcache! on Managed WP ones have these kind of features! no everyone uses or go for managed wp hosting as they are way to expensive ! just take wpengine as example heck its starting plan starts @$30/ 25k visits /50gb bandwidth /10gb storage / 1 Site!
        But on other hand when you go for Cloud Server from vultr or DO or linode ! $30 you will get much better servers and can host as many site as you want ! with no limits like 25k visits, even you will get more storage too! Just saying.

        BTW thanks for your Input! every input is essential to get more clear view of how a CMS should be!

    2. 1

      @volkandkaya ya, but what if these things can be solved without plugin(like jetpack which is used in wordpress premium version) and thing like waf (which again wordpress doesn't have in-built), I mean like people don't have to buy each and every plugin for features like designing, seo and data management(which wordpress doesn't allow by default) and so on things like that. Wordfence almost in a week or 2 publish a article saying "this plugin is exposed the data or had a data breach or the new update of this plugin is vulnerable" and so on..... These things can be solved if the wordpress had already those features in-built, but then it will make it more heavy, and so on!! I taking more and more things into consideration for making this cms project. Let me your thoughts what else I should to do or what else I should focus on! Cheers!!

      1. 1

        Couple of points:

        1. Things like WAF only provide additional security layer when the underlying code is vulnerable. Otherwise they aren't even required. Its like applying a band-aid to an injury.

        2. Building something in-core or offering it together in a bundle doesn't really change anything in terms of security. Code is code & its gonna have bugs. More things you have together, the harder it gets to catch such things. Rather than being bug-free, one should strive for quick iterations to fix such issues as they come up.

        I don't see any benefit in what you are building because essentially its a trade off between what you wanna be & who you wanna cater to. Installing 5 plugins on WP as opposed to installing 1 plugin on WP that does the job of those 5 plugins isn't necessarily better. What matters is the actual benefits that come in.

        Where am I coming from?
        I have used WP for a decade & worked on scaling several high traffic sites & thought about all of these things myself.

        1. 1

          @ashfame ah! great points.
          But there are couple of things, I would like to add! first WAF doesn't only add one extra layer of security to the code that is vulnerable, an ideal WAF or a in-built WAF should work like a learner as does the wordfence, WAF should already have a set of rule for protection(or rules can be created by admin) but in-case it fails it will alert Admin about the cause and it itself should learn (like a new bot or a user agent which is not in a existing db or spam list but is behaving very suspiciously, it should alert admin that it has temporarily blocked the user agent or bot or ip or hostname and that admin should moderate it, and in inside WAF will record such behavior so that in future if this type of behavior happens it will automatically take step what admin took for last one and alert admin --- this ideology is almost followed by Wordfence except that it affects site's speed!).

          And on second point, I completely agree with you the larger the code structure the more intense it gets to find and fix a bug!

          And atlast about installing 5plugins or 1plugin for 5plugins feature, it's about the data - the more plugin or the functionals plugin you use and then replace the bulk data of that plugin still remains there ! and there are some data which can't be removed bcoz even database cleaner plugins don't able to identify which of the data is useless. And the list goes on, also am not denying the WP is not scalable but it totally depends on data and how dynamic the is rendering of pages! like if you go on recording analytics via plugins like wp-slimstat! site gets slow, and there are many more example like this. And to see how am making a different from wordpress, just check all comments on this page I am taking everyone's input on how to make it better!

          Thanks for your input ! All points will help in betterment of this ongoing CMS project!

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            Any high level language firewall will be inefficient. You say it will learn, but what's there to learn? Like sharing ip addresses list or something? Having user(admin) moderate such things is gonna increase the burden on them. It's not really required. Simply block (punish) users for their misbehaviour (like temporarily bans) and just move on.

            Regarding data left in database, its such a minute thing that worrying about is useless. 10s of useless db rows aren't hurting anyone. Hundreds of thousand rows? Sure! Worry about cleaning that.
            Ultimately comes down to using better-coded plugins to cleanup after themselves and use db records wisely, not make poor data decisions.

            Recording analytics is a bad choice for the PHP based architecture, should never be done. It effectively kills whatever caching/scaling strategy you have in place.

            It's important to realize what the actual problems are and then solve them. I can say all of this very confidently, because I was in the same boat as you several years ago. I started writing code for my own jetpack like plugin to counter for deficiencies in WP architecture, before jetpack was this big. Had a cool name for it - WPSuitUp, lol

            1. 1

              First, by learning I mean IP or bot or user agent's indexing behavior or checking out changes made in files that shouldn't be touched, a normal human can't give 350 page views to one site in 1min but bot like yandex and user agent like semrush can and they do it. I mean recording this type of unusual behavior. And what action took by admin for this behavior.

              On second, just checking out post meta table haha! They have so much of useless data and when you use plugin like social Share and enable it analytics, the post meta table is mess.

              And kudos to the plugin you were making, but the problem lies in wordpress built structure, you can solve it via plugin but you are going to need a plugin.

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                Doesn't look like you actually made sense of what I said. Good luck to you!

  2. 4

    Well, I have been a freelance web designer with Wordpress now for almost a year and used it to build clients websites.
    I have been using the Elementor Pro page builder and someone might throw me some smack for charging for a website whilst using a builder but eheyy one would be surprised how many business owners neither have the time or knowledge on how to build something with a builder. And it also provides them with the possibility to change stuff once the site is complete without requiring a huge "how-to" tutorial at the end.

    In general in WordPress, I just like that you can pretty much build anything and everything, and for many businesses just having a basic website is enough and for that Wordpress works wonders compared to something like Webflow which looks great and is a rising star in my opinion but the hosting and all the monthly costs that the client would have to pay is a big turn off. WordPress is free and you can get hosting for WordPress for just a couple bucks a month, sure it won't be the absolute fastest in the world but then again most businesses just want a presence on the web and don't need nor care if their website loads in 50ms or 2 seconds.

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      Where do you host your WordPress sites? I'm considering being a WordPress freelancer

      Any advice on how to start?
      I'm kind of Node JS guy, is the learning curve of wordpress deep?

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        Hey!
        Not sure if this question was directed to me but when building my clients' websites I have in the past made them purchase hosting themselves in their name, because, I am indeed a freelancer and I want to be able to just pack up and shut down when I want to and having a bunch of clients paying me monthly for hosting and sorting that thing out when I eventually pack up is not something I want to deal with.
        Sure, I am leaving a lot of money on the table by not hosting their sites but oh well.
        Back to the hosting part, so, I host my site on hostinger.com I know, I know... There's plenty of "Better hosts" but I don't feel like paying $30 per month for some entry-level managed hosting when hostingers standard shared Wordpress plan is all that I need really.
        Not sure about which of the hosts are the most coder friendly but I would imagine pretty much all of them.
        Bluehost, siteground and Dreamhost are all recommended on wordpress.org site but not sure then in the end if they are that good.
        Hostinger uses Litespeed servers so what I have noticed they are really, like really fast.
        Other than that I can't give much more advice, there's always going to be downsides to having a website hosted on shared hosting rather than managed hosting but I like to maximize the money I can squeeze out of my effort and I have found that my clients don't care if my website loads 0.5 milliseconds slower than my competitors cause in the end it's about the experience, not the millisecond crunching a lot of hosts try to get you hooked with.

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          So you charge them only for your service, all other costs like domain and hosting are not included? That's nice.

          So when you were freelancing it's like one time business relationship, right? You don't handle the maintenance?

          Ah I just noticed that you're from Finland, big fan on Nightwish here haha

          1. 1

            That's correct. I only charge them a one-time flat fee for the website designing and building. Thereafter it's up to them what and how they want to do things.
            I have them sign a contract that clearly states that when the website is done and handed over to them I take no responsibility of the site no more. So in other words, if they change host to a different host than I have recommended, change domain, change settings on the site etc. and the site breaks as a result of that I'll be more than happy to fix it for them but I'll charge an hourly rate for that as usual.

            I have started to slow down the freelancing part a bit since I want to jump into exactly that, maintenance, and charge a flat monthly or yearly fee to make that sweet recurring revenue.

    2. 2

      @meellbn yep! you are right! Some just need online presence of their business. You mentioned you used Elementor (Page Builder) for wordpress, I too used it. You can do super cool design with it (Page Builders). Thanks! I will add a in-built drag & drop page-builder!

      Thanks for input! Kudos!

      1. 1

        A drag and drop builder is great if you want to reach the larger audience and userbase since dragging and dropping is something even a non-techy person can learn in one afternoon without problems.
        Forcing people to stick to the same design as everyone else is bad and so is also forcing people to buy a theme or needing to learn how to code.
        Therefore having a drag and drop builder would be a really nice feature for you to add and maybe provide people with some sample designs or something in that style so they get a bit of inspiration. Since that's what I've noticed with my own clients at least that they are really not paying for the whole website building process, they could care less about how pure and crystal clear the code is, they want their site to look good and that's what people are paying for.

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          @meellbn great input! I will definitely add a drag and drop builder.

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            No small task, Elementor have 100+ employees and just raised 15m.

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              Ya, I know. I will try with drag and drop frameworks like grapesjs or something alike to start as base,please let me know if you have any better input then grapesjs.

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                Nope all the opensource libraries are very weak after talking with a ton of founders and devs.

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                  ah! I see, well will work something out! Thanks for tip! @volkandkaya

  3. 2

    I don't like tools that are too "magic", where it's a major investment to really understand what's going on behind the scenes.

    1. 1

      ah! got ya! will try make UI simple and info section for each page that you know what's going at backend without investing majority of your valuable time in understanding "behind scene".

      Greate Input! @joisigurds
      Thanks for the Input.

  4. 2

    Wordpress is really heavy and slow even for small websites. Security issues. Plugins are a mess.

    1. 2

      WordPress is not heavy and slow. People just add on junk to it and make it slow. This can happen with any custom platform as well.

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        Yes that's right. Wordpress should have done a strict check on the code quality of plugins and themes like Apple does on App Store.

    2. 1

      @kalesh13 well! couldn't agree more. Already working on adding WAF(web application firewall) to ongoing new CMS project!

  5. 2

    It is promoted as easy builder but at the end you need to know to code build site.

    1. 1

      You don't need to code. It's really easy to install themes, and there are visual builders plugins for WordPress, so non-coders can develop themes.

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        @rleija well said! WP is pro when it comes to designing things without coding.

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        Even with themes, if you want to move something few pixels to the left/right at the end you need to go to code. If you install few plugins, site start to open slowly. With all new nocode tools I just don't see the point of Wordpress anymore.

        1. 1

          I would love to see what kind of plugins you’re using that show the site loading slowly.

          Nocode tools are limited and restrict the amount of creativity you can do on a site. You’re bound to their rules and format. But if you’re okay with those restrictions, than that’s cool.

    2. 1

      Yep! I agree. If you have a custom need, you need a custom function for it.

  6. 1

    One time i was nomading, i switch on my laptop and uploading files on ftp. Then i got mysql injection by unknown person. yikes. 20,000+ weird sites install my server

  7. 1

    I don't like that it's written in PHP. If it were written in Elixir + Phoenix, it would scale more easily and it would be much easier to handle concurrent things like chat plugins.

  8. 1

    Start with deciding who your audience is and focusing on their beliefs and needs. That will be your best chance of success, otherwise you're just another guy with a few hours trying to compete in a very, very mature market. The world doesn't really need another CMS, but there are people who will be attracted to the right narrative about how yours is different.

    Business owners are the end-clients. They care about certain things.
    Developers are the distribution channel, the (sometimes) trusted advisors to the business owners. They care about very different things.
    (After a couple of decades in marketing-technology, I've concluded that developers think about the wrong things even more often business owners, but that's another story)

    It sounds like, from your post, you're more interested in the things developers think about — particularly SEO-focused developers — and looking to leverage the somewhat-unjustified-but-widespread hate 'cool' developers have for Wordpress (hey folks, surprise: good developers build good wordpress sites, using well-built and minimal plugins, bad developers build bad wordpress sites, using crappy spaghetti plugins).

    Focus in on exactly what SEO-focused-developers hate — not just about Wordpress, but all the other hip CMS variants, including the headless/decoupled/static movement (Gatsby>Netlify, Strapi, etc.). Develop a very focused narrative about the problem you solve that no one else does, and how it is the problem that will make all the difference for the SEO-focused-developer.

    1. 1

      @andjules
      you got it all wrong! it's not only about SEO! it's more about security, plugins, bloat and so on.

      Just before I got email notification for your comment, I received email from Wordfence, another vulnerability from a famous plugin "DIVI" , you can read it here-
      https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2020/08/critical-vulnerability-exposes-over-700000-sites-using-divi-extra-and-divi-builder/

      ya, SEO is one of many important issue and that's why I added it to the list of in-built feature in CMS, among others.

      And not only SEO is include as one of the in-built features of the CMS, but also features like cache system, waf, pagebuilder & so on.

      Also am not only focused on Developers! I am focused on Both, that's why we will be having two versions- one that is for non-developers (like bloggers, web-designers or internet enthusiastics) and another for developers (HEADLESS version).

      Every version that will be released, will contain fixes, enhancement, improvement or additional features that the community will say or want.

      Also am making it GDPR compatible so that, every important data like user details or payment infos are saved as encrypted data, and so on, there are many more things I am adding regarding to security.

      All this In-built, no freaky plugins.

      and ya I agree on part where you said Business owners are end-clients, very less of them really cares about things like site is slowing down or which plugin will do job best or which plugin is safe to use (unless they used a plugin which had critical vulnerability, last week - LOL!), so for them why not just provide the solution that have already fixed these things, so that they can focus on their business instead of thinking which plugin is going to be vulnerable next week or why the heck is my site slow or shit our plugin bills are coming next week(just kiddin!).

      Focus in on exactly what SEO-focused-developers hate ------ Sorry didn't get this part please elaborate! and SEO-focused-developers (that's a pretty specific term).

      • and looking to leverage the somewhat-unjustified-but-widespread hate 'cool' developers have for Wordpress (hey folks, surprise: good developers build good wordpress sites, using well-built and minimal plugins, bad developers build bad wordpress sites, using crappy spaghetti plugins)* --------- no hates, already told in many comments, wordpress is a masterpiece. I am just trying to built cms that doesn't need plugins for every simple needs like security or designing or syntax highlighting or seo and so on(list goes-on)! that's all (for non-developers, for developer's version I mean headless one- will do another questionnaire! haha! ).

      Anyway, Thanks for input. (and "HATE" is a pretty strong word, we are just devs trying to build something.)

      Cheers!

      1. 1

        Ok, sorry I mischaracterized your goals/misread your (SEO) focus.
        However, the more you explain, the more it sounds like you want to build a CMS that does a lot of stuff, without plugins, and better than Wordpress.
        Do you have 3-5 years and 50 full-time developers?
        Would you try to build your own car company, by yourself, in your garage, hoping it will be better than Tesla or BMW?
        I don't mean to be discouraging; I actually want to encourage you, but to focus on a distinct goal.

        My basic premise is that the world doesn't need another CMS (there are a million beyond Wordpress, most of them well-crafted but without a following).
        But I do believe people (developers) will respond to a new CMS idea if it can tell a convincing story about how it solves a particular problem better than everyone else.
        The more I read what you've written, I guess the particular problem you're solving is no more plugins?

        1. 1

          About our team that's a interesting part! and about that Tesla or BMW example -- ouch! that hurts. I don't think car example suits us best, software companies does start that way haha!! I got your point that world doesn't need another CMS, and am not building just a another CMS, once we launch our beta you get to what exactly we are building but trust me it's not just another cms. And the problem we are solving is much more than just no more plugins, plugins are crucial part for expanding the platform in the way you want. So it's not just about no plugins.

          Stay tuned for our beta to know what & how it's not just some other cms or whether we just solved problem by removing plugins. Just to give you a small glimpse, any html template will work with our cms without writing a single line of code(in-short: you can use any html template as your next theme, we added this b'coz of course no one can complain when it comes to no. of themes wordpress has. Also a static html won't make it bloat unless it use heavy js or css libs haha!! ).

  9. 1

    OK, seems like you already have an opinion on why you hate wordpress. Iam a wordpress developer and here are my pros and cons on it:

    Pros:

    • Easy to use - almost any non-techie can figure out Wordpress and use it to create pages or posts.
    • Very Flexible - The ability to use plugins and its Model-View-Controller architecture make WordPress very flexible and easy to start small and build a much more robust and feature heavy website quickly. Everything is modular and can be ‘bolted on’ rather easily.
    • Great community/documentation - Other than the new REST APIs (which are getting better) - everything in WordPress is fairly well documented.
    • You can customize it - WordPress is open-source, so you can customize it to do what you want. I have made my own themes (working on an AngularJS one now) and plugins for custom functionality if you want.
    • Good for SEO - every WordPress site I have done has ranked very well for its keywords in search engines. Good plugins like Yoast SEO make life easy for basic SEO optimization.

    Cons:
    One of the major CONS of wordpress is its security and I bet on this, also since i am a WordPress security expert and i deal with hacked WP sites on day to day basis. Is a MAJOR ISSUE in WordPress. So all the WP developers & site owners should keep a watchful eye on their site security. I regularly update my blog about various Wordpress hacks & their fixes here, in case you want to have an indepth read - https://secure.wphackedhelp.com/blog/

    • Its popular for hackers - people try to hack Wordpress in part because it is popular - the administrator of the website really has to be on top of making sure security threats are minimized on a WordPress site.
    • Many themes are “bloated” resulting in poor performance - it takes careful selection (or a custom theme) to get something that fits the users needs and is lightweight/quick.
    • If you have tons of content - it might not be the best CMS. If you’re running an eCommerce store for instance with thousands of SKUs and custom options - WordPress might not be the best way to do it as the CMS would just be a little cumbersome/bogged down.

    WordPress is not perfect, but it is a great CMS for what it was intended for - small to medium sized websites.

    1. 1

      @lissacoffey ,well said can't argue any point.
      Thanks for Input.

  10. 1

    Ghost + Gatsby (+ strapi if you want extra content) and using GraphQL can solve a lot of problems for most sites. Yes you are using 3 platforms, but you can get a really great product.

    Also Wordpress Calypso coming in hot. Will change the game. Wordpress moving to a REST API calls and moving away from php / MySQL code base. This will dramatically increase the security.

    I do hate plugins for everything, but still like a lighter product.. blogs are hard at scale. I would focus on a singular niche and build something for them like Ghost did for pure blogging.

  11. 1

    Its a magnet for spam, hackers, bots, and all things bad. I am very happy I discovered Ghost. I will forever be grateful to IH for this.

    1. 1

      @Duscle ya! I agree. Also used ghost it's good, but it's its very limited to just publishing platform. Although Ghost has great integration with other platform no doubt in that.

      Thanks for the input!

  12. 1

    Top 3 in the order of unacceptable to inconvenience.

    • Random database corruption errors.
    • Plugin dependent architecture, which is leading to the bloat.
    • Resource intensive(Well, that's mostly to blame on PHP/JS).

    After more than a decade of using Wordpress for more number of sites than I can keep track of, I've now completely switched to static pages and custom Go based websites.

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      @Abishek_Muthian I see. Never used GO ! please tell me more about it, I mean your experience with GO, already understand those points for wordpress. But why GO?

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        Go is modern, concurrent and more importantly utility first programming language.

        IMO, it fits perfectly for a startup to improve its capital efficiency.

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          @Abishek_Muthian I know what GO is, it's just that I never used it personally! So just want to know your experience with GO! And what do you think of it! And is there anything that it's lacking or should have added!! :)

  13. 1

    Wow, incredible discussion -- great feedback from everyone!

    Never thought I'd read so much about CMSs.

    But, it has definitely got me thinking about whether or not I should test migrating one of my blogs over to a different (leaner, faster, more secure) platform.

    I'm currently using WordPress on most sites, though my eCom site is using it's own CMS (which only has basic functionality).

    @aryabh - here are some of my thoughts based on experience on my WordPress sites.

    -------------------
    Schema
    -------------------
    I've been using schema.org types quite a bit this year, so if you're building a CMS, I'd recommend finding the most used/popular ones, and include them.

    The ones I see most often are FAQ, Person, HowTo, Article, News, Recipe, Job Posting, Event.

    -------------------
    Block Editor
    -------------------
    I originally hated Gutenberg for writing articles, but they've made a lot of improvements. Now, I prefer using it over the "Classic" editor.

    Links: I'm not sure if this come from native WP or some other enabled plugin on one of my sites, but setting link attributes (rel, target) is now quite easy in the block editor.

    Setting the right link attributes is VERY important for SEO. Before I'd have to go into the code to set that info, and it was a total pain in ass.

    -------------------
    Comments/Subscriptions
    -------------------
    This is another big one because it allows my site to have a community-type environment.

    Visitors can comment & subscribe to get notified when others reply or post comments, or just "follow" an article so they can get updates when people post comments.

    This brings visitors back to my site (i.e. more traffic)

    -------------------
    SEO
    -------------------
    SEO is a BIG part of writing articles, and most newer bloggers don't really understand how to incorporate SEO best practices while they're writing. That's why Yoast & Rank Math have become very popular.

    While those tools don't do anything technically to improve the SEO of an article, they provide guidance to the writer. Even after you get the hang of it, while you don't need the tool to write an SEO-optimized article, the tools give you quick visual indicators of what you may have overlooked.

    Even if the CMS does the "technical" part of SEO well, it's only part of the equation to ranking in SERPs. So, you should consider how you're going to help the end-users do their job (writing) more efficiently.

    -------------------
    Web Stories
    -------------------
    Also, just heard about Google releasing a WP plugin for Google Web Stories, designed to help content creators create "snackable" content for mobile users. I'm planning to test it on one of my Wordpress blogs and see how it works. Might be something to consider for your CMS.

    -------------------
    More
    -------------------
    There are probably more end-user type stuff that I'm missing, and if I remember them, I'll come back here and update this post, or create a new post.

    @volkandkaya - what CMS are you using on Versoly?

    1. 1

      @iammike ah! great input, I almost forgot about "Schema" abd "Google Web Stories" rest all are already added in to do list, some of them like SEO, Comment & Subscription already added.

      Thanks for Input!

    2. 1

      https://versoly.com/ has a custom built CMS, looking at doing some updates to make it even more powerful while hopefully keeping it simple (easier said than done).

      Saw the web stories plugin, I really want to add something like that to Versoly.

      Comments are interesting as well, trying to think of a solution for that (hard to deal with spam etc). I know a lot of WP users who turn them off.

      1. 1

        Gotcha. Thanks @volkandkaya

        Yeah, I use a plugin (ha) that pretty much eliminates comment spam. It's called Anti-Spam by CleanTalk.

        The key plugins I run on one of my sites are:

        1. Ad plugins - to help monetize the site
        2. Anti-Spam by CleanTalk - eliminates comment spam
        3. 410 Gone posts - helps clean/remove old content
        4. Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights (though I may change to SiteKit)
        5. Subscribe to Comments Reloaded - comment subscription
        6. Ultimate Blocks - Adds some Schema blocks to Gutenberg
        7. Wordfence Security
        8. WP Rocket
        9. WPForms Lite
        10. Yoast Premium - SEO & 301 + other Redirects
        11. Code Snippets - Add customizations

        For any serious publisher, the above is a minimum tool-set that provides enough control over your site.

        I guess the moral to the story is that for anyone looking to build a CMS, to get adoption, they have to have the feature-set that publishers need.

        We're not developers, and we don't want to hire a developer for every little thing. But, we need certain things in order to run our sites the way we want/need to run them.

        So, that's why WP is attractive to many, because of the large eco-system of support and plugins.

        As a Product guy, I'm definitely open to trying new things, but there's always a risk when the support eco-system is small.

        I learned a BIG lesson when I picked an eCom system back in 2010. It was (and still is) one of the best eCom platforms available, but it didn't get adoption and basically shut down.

        Thankfully I bought a full site software license, which allowed me to continue running the software after they closed. But, getting support and updates for it has been hard, time consuming, and expensive.

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          @iammike I got your point! and that set of plugin is used by almost every serious publisher, especially Yoast and Wordfence. I am making sure those features of these two plugins are already in-built features in the cms am working on.

          1. 1

            Nice! How can we follow your progress @aryabh?

            1. 1

              I will soon open beta version for testing and start collecting emails for beta testing, in that case you can send me your email here ([email protected]) ! I will add you to the betalist, so you will receive notification once we start release beta.
              Cheers!

  14. 1

    Please, go check ClassicPress CMS.

    1. 1

      @ELICA ya! I already know about ClassicPress. It's a good alternative for wordpress, for people who still wanted to use wordpress but at same time think for alternative.

      1. 1

        I am biased because I am involved in the ClassicPress project as i18n team lead.
        I can understand why you are building a new CMS, and I wish you the best.
        But really, are you "hating" the WP ecosystem to the extent of building something entirely new? Can I ask you why? Your answer might help us ClassicPressers do better...

        1. 1

          @ELICA I don't hate wordpress, it's a master piece which allow developer to more features it, in just few lines of code. And the reason why I building entirely new is that, I don't want to use plugin for Every small things, I mean obvious things that should been inbuilt as part of wordpress not as plugin, ya if you want some custom features then there should be hooks and apis and all which wordpress has but at the same time there are features of wordpress which I think are pretty much useless now a days like XMLrpc (which I know classicpress is planning on removing). Also some plugins who has massive downloads doesn't even care that they are making wordpress bloat and front-end bulky, but then some will say use cache and html minifier plugins.... Ya sure first you make it bulky then add one additional plugin to suppress that. It shouldnt have been like this in the first place if wordpress it self had integrated those features, bcoz wordpress as platform would done it better way then plugin developers using hooks and apis!

          1. 1

            Thanks for your feedback! I can understand you are going a totally different way than we are and really appreciate your honesty in detailing the crucial points you want to improve with your project!

  15. 1

    I know many people will disagree, but to me Laravel is good if you don't want to scale your app. If it gets bigger, the "magic" behind Laravel (it hides its layers on purpose, to make it "simple") becomes to be a serious problem, especially when you have bugs.

    Wordpress is find if you want to build a blog and put content in it. If you want to do something more personal and personalize it, it can be a mess. It's an old tool, with many layers of bad practices. It's slower than the concurrence, too, especially static blog.

    1. 1

      @MatthieuCneude great point! can please tell me in-brief what you actually mean by laravel becoming serious problem when it gets bigger! just out of curiosity!

      1. 1

        Laravel use facades to hide its implementation. It's great if everything goes right (it hide the complexity), but if you have a bug, it's a pain to go through the facades and understand what happens.

        Laravel is just a tool. At the end of the day, it depends how you use it. It's just my personal experience.

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          ah I see! @MatthieuCneude , Seems you are right on that Facade part. Well it shouldn't be that much of a problem, if you use Laravel Debugbar - am I right?

          1. 1

            🙂 I let you make your own opinion. No technology is perfect, and maybe Laravel will suit you.

            1. 1

              @MatthieuCneude ah! I am using laravel, ya you are right no technology is perfect. That's why support will be provided like others!!

              Let me know your opinion what else do think we should do make things close to perfect!!

  16. 1

    IMO, if you want to build a great CMS, figure out how to make a WYSIWYG UX 100x better than WordPress. That's where people spend 99% of the time in WordPress.

    1. 1

      @rleija great point! I am planing on adding WYSIWYG editor like the on Medium.com has! hope that's better then normal tinymce or ckeditor! haha!!

  17. 1

    I've been blogging on Wordpress for a few years now (https://www.bitlog.com).

    Love: My Google Docs drafts copy/paste well into the WYSIWYG editor. It has good plugins for everything. I use Bluehost as a cheap managed solution, and it has no problem with the rare days that I get tens of thousands of visitors.

    Don't like: I worked hard to get my blog to a "minimally acceptable" performance level - caching plugins, image minimizers, etc. I also needed to install a ton of plugins to get to some baseline of functionality: analytics, etc. It also has weird opinions about "pages vs posts", where posts can get tags and categories, but pages can't. Wordpress is pitched as being a generic CMS, but if you use it for anything but a blog, you run into weird roadblocks. This isn't unique to Wordpress: I remember running into similar issues in Jekyll.

    1. 1

      @jakevoytko great input! I will see to it that this weird concept of "page vs post" is not there in cms! and as for using tons of plugin issue -- nothing to say as I told in earlier comments I will be adding these kind of function as in-built features!

      Thanks for the Input! Kudos!

    2. 1

      Had the same issue when I used Gatsby for https://saaspages.xyz/, I was fighting the framework so hard.

  18. 1

    I didn't want to learn php. I wanted to use markdown; I guess there might be a plugin or something, but I didn't want to search which one is good and install and so on.

    1. 1

      I see! @zzzpeak a readymade solution works perfect for some of us. In that case you will like the cms project am working on right now.

      Thanks for your Input!

      1. 1

        I'm sure you'll be installing a library to make the markdown work. This is essentially the same thing in WordPress, they just call it a plugin.

      2. 1

        No I mean I don't use readymade solution.

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          By readymade solutions I mean plugins and as you mention you just want to do some light coding and make things work accordingly, which is much better then using plugin for Every small functions.

          I am making this project flexible for both developer and non developers.. so just small changes or light code should do things you want. BTW thanks for the input!

  19. 1

    The thing that truly made me switch my blog to Jekyll was the handling of code snippets in the editor. I tried various things and plugins and nothing was good enough. So my suggestion is to make it dev friendly in this way.

    What was also annoying is the security situation and threads around WordPress. That mostly came with its popularity, but makes you not want to self host it. And personally - as self hosting goes - I am not fan of PHP.

    1. 1

      Not sure what your beef against PHP is, but you would prefer to write your content in code rather than a WYSIWYG?

      1. 1

        No, it can be WYSIWYG, but the embed for code has to work smoothly. Copy & paste, syntax highlighting. I always had trouble with WP (but I don't want to say there is no solution, perhaps there is).

        As for PHP, I left that world a long time ago, and I believe PHP got much better. However, I don't want to host any technology that I personally don't work with/interest me (except perhaps static binaries).

        1. 1

          I write code blocks all the time and it works just fine. I do have to escape the HTML with https://www.freeformatter.com/html-escape.html

          I respect your choice.

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            I write code blocks all the time and it works just fine. I do have to escape the HTML with https://www.freeformatter.com/html-escape.html

            You basically confirmed my bad experience.

            In my current setup I just do Markdown code blocks and paste the code. So much better...

            1. 1

              @strzibnyj seems like more and more people are asking for syntax highlighter ! I will add it in upcoming CMS.

              Thanks for your Input!

    2. 1

      @strzibnyj aha! I get it. I will try by best to make it friendly for both Developers and Non-developers! and to make it more flexible so that you can hide your use of CMS type!(all these, without plugin to avoid bloating(one of many reason of wordpress bloating))

      1. 1

        For me personally it's not about hiding CMS features. It's just simple embedding of code with syntax highlighting using various languages.

        1. 1

          ah! sorry my bad! This feature seems promising, I will try to add it in further updates! (or maybe in this first-beta release)

          Thanks for the input! Kudos

  20. 1

    Hi, someone who's been doing client work in Wordpress for several years here (including plugin development). Why did I quit? Bloat. Wordpress both in the frontend and backend is generally as slow as an old lady crossing the street.

    Developing anything more advanced in WP is generally a pain in the ass, compared to using something like Django or Rails where you can customize most tasks with a few lines of code.

    It's monolithic architecture is also a big turn off for me and I am now almost exclusively building backend and frontend (static) apart on different servers and in other languages than PHP.

    That being said: if you don't care about the look and feel or performance of the site, i.e. you're building sites for small businesses that just want "a digital business card", WP is still probably the fastest and least time- and money-expensive way to get this done.

    1. 2

      I wouldn't say WordPress is bloated or slow. People just make it bloated and slow.

      If you don't like the monolithic approach, decouple the front-end from the WordPress platform. Now you can have a fast client-side and still get a kick-ass CMS admin dashboard.

      Also to the speed aspect, PHP 7.x is fast, and you can utilize caching and CDN's to optimize speed.

      Unless, you've built a CMS from scratch, I don't think you have a good grasp on how difficult it is to build a CMS.

    2. 2

      @Nikoisonfire A-ha! Got your point! I will try to make as many function as optional(meaning turn off those functions or features if not in use) as it can, and data manageable (without being an expert in that case), to avoid bloat structure. Let me know you have more thoughts on how bloat can be avoided.

  21. 1

    To be honest I like wordpress from a ease of web design aspect. I almost never create custom themes with it but it is the quickest way I've found to get going.

    I can create a full jamstack site or whatever but speed to ship is the most vital part of my process. Hence, wordpress.

    It is simple enough and battle tested, most hosting providers even offer managed WP hosting for people who are noobs to server management.

    It is really hard to beat.

    1. 1

      @t0be I see. Shipment time and easily customizable platform is a necessity. Thanks for the input! I will add more designing and customization options!

  22. 1

    Been using WP for 10+ years.

    I love the plugin Advanced Custom Fields, and wish a whole CMS was built around that :)

    I hate the cluttered UI, things can be so detached and hidden depending on your use case. Especially with the complex modularity of WP.

    1. 1

      Try Drupal. Is made the way you are describing, I mean, the custom fields are full entities in drupal. Is a fair more advanced framework from the architectural point of view.

      The last part: "I hate the cluttered UI, things can be so detached and hidden depending on your use case. Especially with the complex modularity of WP". I'm agree, but is the same story with all cms, cmf, dxp.

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        I'll use Joomla before I ever touch another Drupal project again! :P

    2. 1

      @Visiwig yeah! that's great point, I will add function like ACF all around cms! seems like a important function to me.

  23. 1

    Security
    I've been experimenting with wordpress recently

    I installed vanilla wordpress in a brand new domain with the default theme and only 2 plugins (cache and firewall), a few days later i was checking the firewall log and it was already being attacked by bots trying to inject malware

    1. 1

      The WordPress team has always been good about releasing security patches very quickly. WordPress is just more popular, so it's gets more attention from hackers.

      I'm sure this would be the case if any other CMS was more popular than WordPress.

    2. 1

      This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

      1. 1

        @Thyphex ya! I have been using wordpress as developer, seen many time bots fishing on my wordpress site, also when some clients used nulled plugins, the nulled site too injects ad-malwares in the plugin, some of them even redirect your visitors! or add a js popup ad! I have some of this kind of worst experiences.

        Thanks for the Input! I will be adding in-built WAF in on-going CMS project!

  24. 1

    Hate the security issues, constant annoying updates, slow page loads, not-fit-for-purpose CMS (other than for blogging). Love the ease of set up of WP, the massive plugin ecosystem for pretty much anything you want to build, huuuge dev talent pool and resources/tutorials. WP as headless and WP static seems to be promising solutions, but not all dynamic features work well with those setups, so it comes with its own problems. In that space, I like SiteSauce and Shifter.

    Right now I'd moved on to JAMstack (Gatsby + Netlify) - static sites with all the speed and security, plus CMS and templates and all! I'm slowly moving my WP sites to that, and also helping other build their first JAMstack sites. Gatsby has its own plugin ecosystem, though no one can match WP (which in my view, is the only good reason left to use WP)...

    1. 2

      What CMS do you use for your static sites?

      1. 1

        I use headless CM like NetlifyCMS, but also love Forrestry and Contentful. Are you building JAMstack too?

        1. 1

          Yep, but currently I'm not using any CMS.

    2. 1

      ya! you are right! WP has a vast plugins repo that is developed in last 5-6 years, but as you already know how bloat it is when you replace a plugin for another ! also as you already said, and I too mentioned here about security issues.

      @volkan ya, but what if these things can be solved without plugin(like jetpack which is used in wordpress premium version) and thing like waf (which again wordpress doesn't have in-built), I mean like people don't have to buy each and every plugin for features like designing, seo and data management(which wordpress doesn't allow by default) and so on things like that. Wordfence almost in a week or 2 publish a article saying "this plugin is exposed the data or had a data breach or the new update of this plugin is vulnerable" and so on..... These things can be solved if the wordpress had already those features in-built, but then it will make it more heavy, and so on!! I taking more and more things into consideration for making this cms project. Let me your thoughts what else I should to do or what else I should focus on! Cheers!!

  25. 1

    I haven't developed using server side rendering since 5 years ago, and WP not since < 2010. Dusty dusty stack. To much bloat, too many options, just nah... I wouldn't pick it for any project honestly.

    If I'm setting up some CMS for our small company I'm using Netlify CMS with hexo or gatsby template, usually. All static sites. They are fast to load, easy to host, and you can pair with any template and customize the layout to your heart's content. The CMS looks like this in case you are interested. All the fields in the editor are customized in a yaml config file, tons of different options.

    Assuming we had some customer come saying they really want to blog, I would probably go with ghost or take some time to setup the same stack we use. Setting up the CMS is not slow, just that I tend to customize the templates quite heavily which takes time.

    For some customer who doesn't want to pay premium, I use squarespace. I can make a website on there in under 4 h.

    1. 2

      ah!! seems like more and more people are going for Headless cms these day! Then I should consider adding headless option pretty soon!

      Thanks for your Input on this Topic @neea

  26. 1

    you shouldn't build a CMS, now the future is headless, even wordpress user are migrating to wordpress headless or CMS that are headless.

    1. 1

      You still need a dashboard to enter content. I just think the answer is, WordPress does this better.

    2. 1

      ah! that's great point @AllanAndresCh
      I will try to add option for going headless! just as there is gatsbyjs for making wordpress go headless!

      Thanks for the Input!

      1. 1

        Sorry for the n00b question but what does headless mean? Google isn't helping much on this front.

        1. 1

          @JayGoingForGold headless is basically apis! here https://www.storyblok.com/tp/headless-cms-explained

          This will help you with more better explanation and why are developers loving it.

          1. 1

            I think i got it now, thank you.

            In a nutshell, building a headless framework means all the details of how to run my app is not saved in the CMS?

            I feel this is what I have been doing with an app I'm working on without naming it anything - I have all my appdata in standard js/html/php files. Then I do use wordpress so I have some website at the end of the day, but the wordpress pages are just pulling data from my php files. Sounds like a similar idea? In theory I could use any other hosting service to call my files.

            1. 1

              You are doing a Rest Api thing, headless is a little bit different !

  27. 1

    This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

  28. 1

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 1

      This happens everywhere, not just WordPress. Even iPhone apps, incompatibility issues.

      1. 1

        This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    2. 1

      ya! that's a great point! @Romstar
      It happened with me too!

      1. 1

        @Romstar no everyone is not ok with this(think of it, a person who has 24k/visitor per day i.e. 1k/visitor per hour or 16/visitor per min.... so every tried to add a plugin and a plugin breaks the site then he has to login to server and rename the plugin folder to manually disable the plugin! well you can calculate how much visitor he lost till then.)! they just accepted it. That if we add a plugin there's going mess! and that's the reason some of them test plugins on localhost before trying them on live site. But even after taking such precaution sometime things mess up due to varying environment differences between localhost & a live server!

        Thanks for Input! I will try to find solution for that in this ongoing project.

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