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Comment by lux | Hacker News Reader

This seems like an awful lot of extra layering on top of WP's horribly ugly theming system... And adding Ruby as a requirement? What about building on PHP-based tools like Assetic, or a cleaner template format?

https://github.com/kriswallsmith/assetic

I've never understood why people were willing to jump through so many hoops building themes in WP's messy way.

As a comparison, here's a complete theme (based on the Twitter Bootstrap toolkit) for my current PHP-based project (self-promo, but illustrates the difference well IMO):

https://github.com/jbroadway/bootstrapped

One HTML file, Bootstrap + one short CSS file, zero mixing of PHP code. Most WP alternatives offer similar theming, either Mustache-based like the above is based on, or Twig, both of which are much much cleaner options IMO.

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It's not a horribly ugly theming system.

I'm mainly an HTML and CSS guy, and know a healthy amount of PHP.

But I don't know enough to set up a server, databases, write a CMS from scratch (well, maybe I could), and I don't like spending a lot of time in the Terminal. I'm not a programmer.

Even as a designer, I'm able to use WordPress' powerful theming system (which is pretty easy to understand and, in my opinion, not ugly at all) to build out an entire easy-to-use site for a client without having to also hire a developer. The WordPress community is massive and helpful, PHP is well-documented and simple to work with if you know HTML, and you can literally use WordPress to make almost anything on the web. Maybe it would be better theoretically to hire a developer or learn to be one, but I don't like hardcore programming and sometimes just don't need a developer that I have to pay for, wait for, etc.

WordPress, in a way, makes the ability to make simple web apps, dynamic sites, and blogs a more democratic thing; many people can pick enough WP knowledge in a few weeks to do things that would take months or years of programming training.

From the point of view of an experienced software developer, writing a Wordpress theme is an ugly job because the Wordpress API is inconsistent, incomplete and badly documented.

Just as an example, it is better to make an app like BaseCamp or Campfire with Ruby on Rails than WordPress. But I can learn enough in a matter of weeks to make something like the P2 Theme (http://www.p2theme.com) with WordPress; god knows how long it'd take me to go from completely zero programming knowledge to the level required to build the same thing in RoR

Yeah, but if a client wants something custom you're stuck either modifying an existing plugin, or creating a new one, and creating Wordpress plugins is a godawful mess.

Care to expand on 'godawful mess'?

It's pretty straightforward and easy imo.

As someone who sucks at programming, I second that sentiment.

Wordpress provides little structure of framework for your plugin. There are plenty of hooks and functions to use, to integrate with each step of the rendering process, but other than that, you're on your own. Each plugin tends to provide it's own miniframework... or lack of one. A plugin tends to look like it's own self contained PHP web site from 2005.

Trying to integrate several different WordPres plugins is a challenge, as they each tend to be written in their own style.

It's php, there are a lot ways to write code that result in desired functionality - that's a plus in my book. There are thousands of differents types of programmers writing plugins for WordPress - more than any other open source project, so it's darn obvious there are going to be lots of different ways plugin writers approach their plugins.

Having said that, there are guidelines and best practices found in the codex (for one, all the hooks and filters that are available which are generally well documented) and there is some quality control when submitting plugins to the WP directory. In addition to that there is a fantastic handbook (professional WordPress plugin development) that gives both beginners as well as veterans a healthy education in the best ways to write plugins. And there's a big blogging community writing detailed tutorials.

I'm not sure what you mean with integrating plugins - what does that accomplish? Most plugins run fine when running concurrently on an install.

A lot of these criticisms toward WordPress in this thread are a bit ridiculous if you ask me. Yes it's written in PHP, big deal. Yes there's a lot of code that if written afresh today would look different. Yes there's variable quality in code written by various plugin/theme developers. At the end of the day WordPress is plain accessible for people - and that is a big reason for its success.

I started out years ago knowing zero about code to where I am today. My first plugin was shit and know I'm getting pretty good at it. Because developing on WordPress has been so much fun I taught myself Php, html, css, javascript (including ajax and jquery). Clearly, I'm not the only one as it is the most active community of all the CMS choices out there - and a lot of people are making a living thanks to it.

My point was that raw PHP is a little too unstructured and powerful for the tasks that many plugins are made to accomplish.

By integration, I mean adopting plugins from various authors and making them work as part of your theme. There are all sorts of issues involved... random visual design, clashing HTML doctypes, possible poor coding, adding functionality, fixing security issues... creating a coherent, secure and functional site by piecing together various WordPress plugins is not as easy as installing some plugins and whistling off into the glorious sunset. Simply finding a plugin for a certain purposes which actually works can be a challenge.

I wasn't attempting criticize WordPress or PHP in general, just the quality of the average plugin and the lack of consistency and order.

See, I still disagree. Working with WordPress has been nothing but (relatively) easy for me, even when making relatively complex plugins.

No one is arguing that WordPress is better, necessarily, than a custom build. But reality trumps theory. Theoretically a perfect diet may be out there, but if you can't afford it and won't adhere to it, for example, a less-theoretically-perfect diet that you can afford and can actually follow is better.

A lot of times I or my client can't afford a developer for a custom app. WordPress solves that problem, and I think it's only getting better, simpler, and more stable with time (as all open-source projects kinda do).

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