Reasons Why WordPress Made PHP Popular, not PHP Frameworks

Its being better than Movable Type is the only reason I ever switched to Wordpress.

You're an old grey beard now to the kids who think about php.

> I remember working on sites upgrading to php3 (with the file extension php3 no less!)

And I remember renaming all those .php3 files to .php when upgrading to php4. Thanks a lot! =)

I agree in as much as I think that PHPClasses is an anachronistic throwback to the bad old days of PHP. It has a shameful history of promoting terrible code with dubious "awards" as if it were the greatest thing ever built. Newcomers to PHP development would be better served by a web that lacked phpclasses.org in its current form.

For example, in a recent article entitled "26 Ways to Show that PHP Can Be Better Than PHP" (http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/203-26-Ways-to-Show-that...), they showcased a series of "multithreading" implementations in ascending order of WTF, culminating with this:

    Mohammed Yousef from Egypt has written the PHP
    Threader class that also takes advantage of the
    fact that a Web server can run multiple scripts
    in parallel, except that it uses AJAX requests
    sent from the browser to start the scripts.

I disagree, however, with the idea that Manuel Lemos is a clueless, destructive clown. I think he's a well-meaning, intelligent person who has somewhat failed to keep pace with the "proper software engineering" standards that have infiltrated PHP in recent years.

For example, in an article from 2013 comparing development using Wordpress vs using a framework, I would have expected some comparison of the viability of automated testing in each approach. And unless my name was Fabien Potencier, I would not expect to be advised to "use your own framework if you have a good capable framework to address your needs".

But this is only destructive to the extent that others fail to make a strong case for building well-tested software using high quality open source libraries where suitable instead of endlessly reinventing wheels. There is room for competing ideas, and I don't see these particular ideas as an especially worrying competitive threat.

> WordPress benefited from the fact that PHP hosting was always cheaper (even free) than hosts that supported Perl or Python (this was a little before Ruby became popular through Rails). You could find oversold hosting plans for as little as $1,99/mo.

Why was/is that the case?

I don't see network effects or path dependence keeping it at the top. In fact its share of the universe of free open source CMS installs, has I believe been increasing in recent years.

I think there is a shared experience out there that when you put it up against alternatives such as Joomla, Drupal, ModX, and to some extent even Magento that it's the only CMS you can ship to a client without having to field calls all day on how to use the thing.

Plus, the ease of simple templating and plugins available allow small shops to deliver products with which they can actually make a profit. I believe this reason alone is a big driver of WordPress recommendations.

I'll also mention that my comment is from the point of view of design shops, contractors, and freelancers. If someone is building, maintaing or planning a free standing product website that will have engineering resources dedicated to it then yes, there are probably better alternatives.

Out of curiosity, which plugin, may I ask?

Out of curiosity could someone still do that in today's landscape?

Code style is the least of Wordpress' faults. Completely fucking insane architecture (or lack thereof) and ridiculous use of the database should be much higher concerns

Oh man, I remember PHP-Nuke! One massive switch statement. My first introduction into coding anything beyond HTML, believe it or not...