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Comment by danjoredd | Hacker News Reader

Is there any reason to want to use SQLite for Wordpress? Its always great to have more options, but Im unclear as to why someone would use that instead of MySQL

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MySQL is a bit of a faff for the average person who wants to self-host WordPress. SQLite can be made more user friendly. Plus, MySQL is more expensive to host.

Resource usage on a default MySQL install today is quite outrageous relative to what is needed for a typical blog.

Simple backup and restore. Different or less quirks. Less passwords. Easier to deploy on edge. Less Oracle

Uhh, kinda. You're not supposed to just copy SQLite file for backup purpose [1] but I'd wager many people will just go HURR DURR IT'S A FILE I WILL JUST BACKUP A FILE and then be surprised if something fucks up

https://www.sqlite.org/backup.html

Complexity? I have a small site that would run just fine with SQLite. I’d switch over in a heartbeat.

I'm curious as to how much of your site depends on WordPress, vs. just using a static site generator.

I use Hugo, and I have a relatively ergonomic workflow set up where I use iA Writer to write posts on my iPad, then Working Copy to push them to a git repo. Then my server pulls that repo on a cron job, and builds and deploys it. It’s fine. It gets the job done.

But I confess that being able to post a new entry to an API and have it published instantly sure is attractive. If WordPress had a better security track record, I’d be tempted to switch to it. You don’t get much more secure than a bunch of static files served straight from disk, though.

My mother in law is the one writing content for it. She knows Wordpress from working for other companies. In theory I could teach her something new, but why bother? She enjoys what she’s doing now. I don’t want to take away from that.

That's understandable. My question wasn't meant as a challenge--I'm assuming that most sites could transition to a static site with judicious JS to lively up things.

One killer feature for me aside from usability for less-technical people are comments. While comments are not be necessary for certain types of websites, I consider them essential for anything you might call a blog.

Complexity? MySQL 1 click installs on damn near every WordPress install. I fail to see how it is complex.

Keeping it updated and backed up is complex. Sqlite can be embedded inside an application (easy updates) and the database backup is a single file.

Someone's never seen a WP white screen of death because of some esoteric MySQL error the average person will have no idea how to debug.

Zero clicks is better. And less resource usage, which can help on really small instances with multiple applications.

For a VM with a couple of wordpress blogs that I administer SQLight should allow to reduce memory from 4 to 2GB. In addition the blogs will no longer share the database improving security (while the blogs has the same Wordpress version the plug-in set is different, so a vulnerability in one is not necessary affects another).

SQLite would bring simpler installs, reduced administration needs, and a decreased attack surface.

Portable WordPress

This is at least a decade overdue. I've moved my personal site to Pico CMS (flat-file) for precisely this reason.

How cool would it be to bundle WordPress as a single PHAR file with one SQLite db file to go with it in the same directory?

Hopefully you'll be able export your entire site as a single .db file. SQLite also has easy serialization to JSON or CSV built in. I've never worked with mysql but I use SQLite in web workflows a lot and it's just so simple.

"Download Wordpress.exe and double click to run it"

As someone who works with WordPress-hosting: Simplicity.

A lot of people use WordPress for drag'n drop site building. Getting such sites over on Sqlite would increase uptime (less chance of failure withou the separate DB server), reduce support load (easier to move from other providers) and so on.

Alas, compatibility will not be that great with various plugins, so I fear adding SQLite this late will just have the opposite effect.

Because 99% of Wordpress installations would be much better off without any sql database, aka something like a git backend.

You could run it on the edge, serverless. CloudFlare D1 supports a SQLite database that your code on the edge can access. That gives you an amazing way to run WordPress without worrying about the OS.

PHP isn’t natively supported there yet, but I can imagine such a thing could be built and be successful.

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