[wp-hackers] WordPress as CMS (was: wordpress security)

[Stephen Rider]

On Oct 21, 2009, at 5:50 PM, William Canino wrote:

> Anyone who'd [use WordPress for a page-only site] penalizes himself  
> with all the software bloat and
> overhead IN WordPress to make feeds, scheduled posts, chronological
> articles, stickies, comments, paged comments, comment feeds, date
> archives, et cetera.  He forces his web server and his readers to
> suffer this burden.

Okay, good point.  Do you perhaps have any pointers as to where/how I  
might deactivate some of this to lighten the load?  Perhaps someone  
could do a patch into core so admins can do things in wp-config.php to  
prevent certain parts of WP from loading.  (Basically a hidden feature  
that does nothing unless you set certain Constants in config?)

Incidentally, if I do make the "Just Pages" plugin, it would certainly  
have options.  For example, maybe you don't need posts, but you want  
comments on pages (or vice versa).  I'm liking the permissions  
approach, as it's likely the most "future proof" method of hiding/ 
turning off this stuff.

As for the "Why", there are a few reasons why I myself would like  
WordPress sans "posts":

	1) Admittedly, there's an aspect of "if all you have is a hammer";  
and I think this applies to a whole lot of people.  I know WordPress  
very well, and as such I can generally look at a given site and say  
"WordPress can do that, and here's how".  The hook system in WordPress  
is extremely well implemented, and you can do a lot of things with it.

	2) The back-end interface is INCREDIBLE.  A design firm recently did  
a web site for the company I work for (day job), and used Drupal.  I  
acknowledge that Drupal may be very flexible, but the back end  
interface is absolutely horrible in comparison to WordPress.  I'm a  
"power user" and I think it's terrible.  I can't *imagine* handing  
this over to someone who is not web-savvy and expecting them to  
maintain/update their own site!  Whereas WordPress I would happily  
hand over to a non-web-savvy person (and have done so-- having first  
said "Um... just ignore all the blog stuff").

	3) The plugin system is better than Drupal as well, IMO. Again, this  
is interface perhaps, but in Drupal you have one page that tells you  
what updates there are, another page (not cross-linked!) for  
activating and deactivating plugins.  Activating plugins is a process  
of guesswork, and many plugins are splintered across the plugin page  
with different pieces here and there with a ton of different  
checkmarks.  In the example of the site that was made for my company  
(which I now get to manage) I know that the designers installed  
plugins that they didn't end up using, but it's very difficult to tell  
which ones they are.  How many plugins are there installed but not  
activated?  This should NOT be a hard question, but it is.

	4) Drupal Themes?  Ditto.  I can't even *find* the templates for  
different pages.  It's not in the "theme" directory, that's for sure.   
The database maybe?  Hard to tell, as there are a gazillion tables in  
the database -- it appears that the system adds an entirely new table  
for each and every custom field... or something.  W. T. F.  (This may  
be a case of the designer horribly misusing Drupal, I suppose -- but  
it appears to be readily possible.  In WordPress you'd have to *work*  
to screw it up this badly.)

	5) Yes, WordPress posts can be used for other things, but if so, I  
would almost rather add a custom "thing" and use that, rather than  
using posts for something they weren't meant for.  (WordPress "post  
types" allows for something very similar to Drupal's "nodes" if only  
the interface were better implemented for it.  I'm pretty sure some  
plugins do this somewhat.)

So the short version is:  WordPress has an *awesome* interface that is  
a pleasure to work with, (*and* code for), and I would proudly present  
that interface to a client.  As such, I want that interface to not  
scream "blog" at the top of its lungs.

(Oh, and yes I know there are other CMSes than Drupal, but again, if  
WordPress can do what I need, why learn several different systems?  I  
would rather master one system than be "okay" with a bunch of them.)

Stephen


-- 
Stephen Rider
http://striderweb.com/