WordPress is a hell I can't escape | Hacker News Reader

WordPress is a hell I can't escape

3 pointszacksta14 comments

I used to build, host and manage Wordpress sites for a bunch of small businesses. Even though I stopped offering that service years ago, I continued to host a number of sites as a gesture of goodwill.

Recently, I decided that I was paying way too much for the hosting and so decided to migrate...

This is where I entered the doors to hell.

The sites are running on old wordpress and PHP versions and are brimming with plugins I used to smooth over gaps in my programming knowledge.

I cannot migrate the sites to a new server without first upgrading their wordpress/PHP versions. The problem is, when I do that, the sites break due to a host of unknown errors.

It's actually comical at this point

I feel like it's karma for cutting corners and not maintaining those sites correctly over the years.

Anyway, just thought I'd share. Maybe it'll give someone a good laugh haha

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This is why third party CMS themes and plugins can be a minefield. You're dependent on code you didn't write/don't know about to keep your site working, with no guarantee it'll be updated/keep working in future (especially if said theme or plugin is by a company that no longer exists, author that doesn't work with that software anymore, etc).

Sadly there aren't many good options at this point. You can try and fix the offending plugins yourself, though that can be far more difficult than even rebuilding them yourself. You can try and rebuild said plugins from scratch, but that's also a lot of work, especially if you have to keep some form of backwards compatibility. Or you can remove the features in question, which may not be practical if the plugin is deeply integrated into the structure of the sites.

Out of curiosity, what sort of things do these plugins do though? Maybe we can figure out if other solutions exist to replace them, or whether these particular features are still needed in 2023.

Exactly. I thought I was being clever using themes and plugins to build super fast... I don't know how to fix the plugins myself or rebuild them.

It's actually not just plugins but also the themes I'm using which add to the complexity. Honestly it's a.total minefield and I think the solution is either to rebuild from scratch or just ask the clients to take over the hosting costs.

Really appreciate you trying to help - the world needs more humans like you!

Exactly. I thought I was being clever using themes and plugins to build super fast... I don't know how to fix the plugins myself or rebuild them.

It's actually not just plugins but also the themes I'm using which add to the complexity. Honestly it's a total minefield and I think the solution is either to rebuild from scratch or just ask the clients to take over the hosting costs.

Really appreciate you trying to help - the world needs more humans like you!

Yeah, I constantly flip between wanting to self-host and do things myself, and ragequitting that type of thing when this sort of stuff comes up. Paying someone else to screw with all this – at their own best scale – cuts frustration, but obviously comes with a cost that's frustrating every few years when you realize how much money you're sending to someone else to do something you can do. Then once the pendulum swings the other way and you start doing things yourself again you realize the money you're saving is going toward mind-numbing tasks and updates you have to research yourself because someone who isn't dealing with this stuff every day isn't the person doing them.

Absolutely. It's painful spending time and effort on this kind of thing. I even paid $100 for a plugin hoping it would solve my problems... It didn't and then I also had to spend more time trying to get a refund lol.

Trying to "suddenly" update something that's years out of date to a current[ish] version is always fraught with weirdly closeted skeletons

At this point, I'd probably do

- mysqldump of each site

- mysql import them on a new server

- setup however many instances of wordpress I needed

- connect all those instances to the imported databases

- click "upgrade database" (or similar) ... and hope for the best :)

Alternatively:

- generate a non-limited RSS feed of the whole site (not capping at 5 or 10 entries, but every entry)

- import into a different blogging platform via that rss feed

Appreciate this! Hadn't thought of the RSS route.

I've done that a couple times myself moving from one platform to another :)

Wordpress itself is pretty secure. The plugin and Themes are the issue. One of the downsides of open source is that anyone can make a plugin and there is no minimum standards. While I hate ecosystems like Apple, it does have its advantages.

Yup - it's both plugins and themes that are my downfall. I relied on them both way too much.

When migrating sites built on archaic technology, the best bet usually is scraping the site externally and generating normalized data from it and using that to either build a new site or migrate to a new platform with custom scripts.

Appreciate the advice!

This is why I quit using Wordpress in favor of hugo static html. All the "Yes I will set up wordpress, so you can edit it yourself" did always lead to me doing 100% of the work regardless.

Checking out Hugo - thanks!

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