Lately I've been thinking a lot about building a website/blog/community oriented site. However I can't decide if it's a good idea to build it using Wordpress as a base.
I've been reading around the Internet, and I've seen that many users have trouble with Wordpress using lot of CPU and other resource related problems.
So, what do you think? Is it wise to actually build an application based on Wordpress? Or it would probably lead to undesired results?
Any opinions would help.
WordPress is quite flexible once you get the hang of its WordPress Loop, Page Templates and how to create a customised homepage. Using some plugins, such as the Page Redirect To and Custom Taxonomy, you can have a pseudo-CMS. There are also widgets and plugins that let WordPress mimics CMS-like behaviour, such as listing all sub-pages within a pages, customize how categories are shown and etc.
If you can handle the WordPress loop and use Page Templates, WordPress is okay to build on-top of. However, its database schema is quite confusing. Depending on your goals, you may want to use CodeIgniter or something else.
If you to get really farther than a blogging software, maybe you can have a look at more generic CMSes.
I kinda like Drupal (which has a lot of plugins that can help you do almost whatever you want on your site) ; as a reference point, it is used by many quite big sites, so, if correctly configured, can hold a bit of load.
Just a remark : you might need at least a couple of day to learn how to use it well, because it is quite rich, has lots of features, and you will probably want to have a look at many modules, to get the ones you need/like. (But that would be true for any CMS, I guess)
I recommend using WordPress MU with the BuddyPress plugin for building a community site. BuddyPress is actively maintained, and the set of features are comparable to the basics of Facebook (wall, groups, pages, etc.). Not to mention all of the plugins. Also, with a little extra effort, you can have bbPress (WP forum software) in your community app too. I am working on a big project using each of these products right now, and it has been much less of a nightmare than the times I've done something similar in the past, using other community apps or forum software.
Well that's basically what Wordpress is for :P I've never heard of any issues with Wordpress using lot of CPU and other resource related problems. It seems perfect for what you want to do. Are you familiar with PHP?
Any moderately-sized site should have a cache in front of WordPress. WP Super Cache is one of the more popular ones. Basically, WordPress should be generating pages only when needed. In all other cases, the page should be served from cache.
Wordpress is open, so you can use it if you want.
But I think building a plugin and hook to Wordpress's main feature is a better ideal.
And btw, What is the meaning of "application" you are developing.
Related
Since a year or two I switched from "Flash websites" to "HTML5" websites for my clients. I decided to use a (maybe unknown) CMS named "Website Baker". It is very easy to make templates for my clients, as you only have two PHP commands (echo getMenu(); and echo getPage(id);). It has also a very simple lay-out so it was not difficult to teach my clients how to edit their content. BUT, there is a big downside to this CMS; there is no support at all and there are not so many "add-ons" available on their website, which obligates you to write them all by your own.
A friend of mine told me yesterday I'd better change to WordPress, because for this CMS you have a good support and there are a lot of ad-ons available. I really consider to change but I got a few questions;
1) Is making a template (apart from the styling) a big deal in WordPress, compared to WebsiteBaker?
2) Can I use WordPress as a CMS? I read that it was rather something for “Bloggers” who regularly post and are in big need for a comment box under each post. Most of the time I only need 5-6 pages and a contact form.
3) Is the back-end-enviroment easy to understand? In other words, can I explain a non-geek how to work with it?
I know every CMS has it's own advantages and disadvantages, I only want to whether or not it is a good idea to change from WebsiteBaker to WordPress.
A big thanks in advance!!
I do not know about WebsiteBaker, but compared to other well known and popular CMS frameworks, developing templates have a much easier learning curve. It also depends on your expertise and previous experience.
There is a big notion among people that Wordpress is only for blogs. But, it can be customized for anything, thanks to thousands of available customized templates and plugins.
The back-end admin panel is pretty simple and definitely easier with much better learning curve than any other major CMS frameworks.
You should definitely look into it, even if you do not end up finally moving to Wordpress.
I think you can definitely use WordPress for your needs. I'm also not familiar with WebsiteBaker. But I can tell you what WordPress gives you compare with other popular frameworks or CMS.
When you plan for a WordPress site, Its better to avoid creating a new template for WordPress until you have good idea about their template system.Thousands of Free Templates available for WordPress. In other words its much easier to create a template compare to Joomla,Drupal or any other frameworks in WordPress.
Sure you can use WordPress as CMS , Now WordPress is not only used for blogging many shopping cart,news,magazine etc are running on WordPress, Keep in mind post comment box and such things have option to enable and disable on backend.For contact forms many WordPress themes comes with that.
Admin side(back end) is very easy to understand and easy to use.
In my opinion its better to change from WebsiteBaker to WordPress, Bcoz of thousands of Free extensions, Active Support Forum, thousand of templates etc.
Hope its make sense..
I have been using wordpress for the last few years and it has evolved tremendously. You can literally use wordpress for anything. The advantages that i found :
Immense SEO support.
Unlimited number of plugins(free/paid) that can be easily integrated
Unlimited number of templates to choose(both free and paid).
Community is excellent.
I have used wordpress for :
Blog
E-Commerce Website
CMS
Learning wordpress is also much simpler compared to other CMS/frameworks/e-commerce platforms.
If you switch from WebsiteBaker to a different CMS, it's worth taking your time to evaluate your options. I have used WebsiteBaker for many years and found the support excellent - usually answers and/or fixes within hours, often within minutes. A matter of luck maybe ... But that will be about the same with any community support.
Anyway, for some purposes, WebsiteBaker simply wasn't powerful enough, so me too, I had to find an alternative. I don't want to start a "mine's better than yours" war here, pretty pointless. Just don't spend a lot of time learning to work with a certain CMS just because someone told you so, or because it's currently most popular. To really understand a big CMS such as Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal can easily take months of intensive studies.
Find out what the strengths and weaknesses of the different CMS's are, find out what your needs are, and then make an educated guess of what's best for you.
I have used WebsiteBaker for years and years on dozens of client sites. It was ahead of many comparable CMS's (inluding Wordpress) for many years. But its development is almost stagnant, and there are only a handful of usable addons. Nowadays it's only usable for very simple semi-static sites, or for more complex sites with a LOT of custom coding added. In my opinion it's very much outdated and not suitable for modern, professional sites. It's a shame, because its templating system is VERY clean, simple and easy, as you know. Also the backend is easy enough for most clients who only want to do simple content stuff.
I moved away from it about a year ago. I just couldn't use it anymore for building modern client sites. I tried many other systems, but in the end I chose to switch to Wordpress. A professional site builder just cannot afford not to be able to use it, as it's the standard for small to midsized sites of all different kinds. It certainly is not aimed at blogging anymore, although you can still use it that way of course.
Wordpress is great and not so great at the same time. It is potentially powerful because of thousands of themes (what WebsiteBaker calls templates) and addons. You can do almost anything you want using these addons. But the core is very basic, so you'll end up spending much time searching for and trying out suitable addons. And Wordpress is really not as easy and user friendly as you may read all over the web, especially compared to WebsiteBaker. So the learning curve is steeper. But the web is filled with info and support, so whatever your support need may be, you'll almost always find help somewhere.
Do NOT try to create your own Wordpress theme, it is much more difficult than WebsiteBaker. There are thousands of themes, many of them free. Beware: do not use free themes from shady origin, they are probably filled with backdoors. In the official Wordpress repo there are many decent free themes that are clean and safe to use. There are also many commercial theme providers with amazing themes for nearly nothing.
So, I certainly recommend switching to Wordpress, even when you will have to put time and effort in finding your way around the system. And don't forget to update as soon as updates become available. You can updated from within the admin with 1 click. And use 1 or 2 good security plugins in each install. Wordpress sites are far more likely to be hacked than WebsiteBaker sites.
I love Kohana code, I don't love Wordpress code. I need to upgrade a blog to have a custom theme, very custom with Grid style blog roll (like Pinterest) and Traditional Blog Roll, and fully responsive for all devices.
I was thinking of keeping the Back end on Wordpress as it currently is (maybe on a different subdomain), and then writing a custom Kohana front end, which queries the WP database and makes up the pages. All blogging happens on WP, all pages that readers see are run as a Kohana site. No user sign up required, there is only one user (the blogger)
Am I crazy? Has anyone tried this? Is there anything to watch out for?
(Yes, what I need to do probably could be done by an experienced WP developer, but I'm not him, and I'm gonna have to maintain this for years to come).
Kohana is a front-end framework, WordPress is a blogging platform, they don’t play well together. You could write a website with Kohana than uses WordPress functions to query the WordPress database, but that’s just stupid and will lead to overhead, spaghetti code, and a pain in the ass at a later date when you realise what a stupid set-up it is.
WordPress’s front-end is perfectly capable at doing what you want to do. I don’t see why you would want to use an entirely different framework—it’s not going to give you an benefits.
I'm taking on a relatively small freelance project and my client would like to update several portions of their site; photo gallery, calendar list, about page, and some event links.
My gut tells me to use something like WordPress and use "Pages" for these sections, but I'm worried about my client maintaining the formatting. Especially something like calendar dates and links.
They won't be doing any blogging - this is just so they can update those sections when needed (obviously).
But then I thought, what if I just roll my own CRUD for these portions, but I'm not sure if that would be necessary for a project like this.
So what would people out there use in a situation like this? How much control does one have over the formatting of content in WordPress? I'd like not to have to teach my client on when to call certain CSS classes.
Any help is more than appreciated.
EDIT:
Any idea how the top carousel of BungoBox was made in WordPress? Or don't you think it's possible and that is done manually?
I would stick to wordpress or similar CMS system. It will be a pain-in-the-arse, to take care of formatting (WYSIWYG for client), take care of security, make the administation pages nice and functional, and so on.
You will find a LOT of information on wordpress as a cms on the web, for example see here
Have you considered any other cms system?
From the description this is a site that would consist of just a few pages that the client would want to update? if so, I'd stick with wordpress myself. There's a ton of pre-written modules and themes already out there, and there's no sense "re-inventing the wheel". Also I've found in my travels that Wordpress leads the pack in being able to manipulate content to your will of all the CMS's and the available WYSIWIG plugins they have. Remember, if they cant' get their document to look just right, guess whose getting the call, and who will be expected to fix it on your dime if you didn't specify that in your contract (you are offering maintenance as an additional feature right?)
Now if the client is looking for a more robust system, a larger site then I interpreted in your writeup, then I'd look into more of a CMS system such as Drupal or Joomla. Avoid the trap that seems to nail PHP coders that it'd be faster to do it yourself; it'd have to be a lot of custom functioanlity to start looking at building it yourself from the ground up (and even then, there's enough frameworks to help)
What about something like Drupal? Never used it personally, but I think it's built for this sort of thing, whereas WordPress is kind of tailored towards blogs.
Definatly go with wordpress, drupal is just too heavy for the job and will take you much longer to configure.
If you are worried about your client ruining design with a WYSIWYG editor, just don't give them access.. keep them on a need to know basis for their own good.
Working with wordpress will free you from maintaining security issues and many other unpredictable-at-this-point cases of reinventing the wheel.
For creating common user modifiable site I've been forcing Wordpress to do the work of a CMS. It's worked and the back-end is purdy but it's just too hacky for my tastes. So I'd like a simple CMS that is easy to customize and add dynamic content to.
Right now it looks like modx is my best bet. I've tried Joomla a while ago but it was a real pain to customize and the back-end was not intuitive.
Basic requirements:
Free
Runs under PHP5
Easy to customize
Easy for content authors
Easy to add dynamic content
If it doesn't have these, then I doubt it's more fit than modx.
I'm a huge fan of modx, I don't have much to add other than to say if you are happy with modx and it does what you need then stick with it.
I just haven't come across anything as easy to use for a developer. The template system, ease of creating your own snippets if you can't find what you need already, everything just seems to fit from a developers point of view.
I have also had no trouble training clients to use it.
The main problem with modx for me is that I haven't really been impressed with any shopping carts/store solutions for modx yet, but I guess it depends on what kind of site you want to make.
i can recommend frog cms http://www.madebyfrog.com/
it's a copy of radiant cms (which is running on ruby/rails, see http://www.radiantcms.org/)
Have a look at this http://php.opensourcecms.com/scripts/show.php?catid=9&cat=Lite
The list contains very lite php opensource CMS, most of them dont even use a database.
You can go through the demo of these and pick the one you like.
I am designing a system for a customer. We are thinking about using Wordpress as a main platform (instead of writing our custom software), and customize it using addons or hiring developers to write some custom modules.
We need to have an ability to have some static pages, few php pages, and lot of user generated content.
What limits do Wordpress have? I have searched website, but did not found any info about for example max number of users. I am interested in experience-based opinions.
So, how Wordpress performs on multi-user websites? Or - do you think it is better to leave Wordpress, and swithch to some other open-source CMS?
Edit
The core functionality about the system will be to allow user to put text content and photos on categorized pages. Some users need an ability to have classic blog on the site, while others will only occasionally publish some content. Some data will be polled by RSS from users’ blogs on the other platform (with a respect to copyrights and legal stuff).
So as far as now I have identified a lot of blog-like functionality.
I have had some pretty good success using Drupal. If you aren't trying to build a blog there are much better things out there for dynamic CMS. Wordpress is a great piece of blogging software. Try to make it do something else? It becomes a big pain to do. Having developed "applications" in both. If a blog is not the primary component (which a news site would also follow suit) then use a true CMS and not a blogging platform.
WordPress places no maximum on users, posts, etc. beyond that of the underlying technologies (your database, mainly). WordPress.com runs on the WordPress MultiUser platform and it has six million blogs, a billion monthly pageviews, and 200k new posts a day.
Your limitations will be more structural - WordPress is designed first and foremost as a blogging platform. If its interface and methodology fit your project well, go for it, but if you're going to be hacking the shit out of it, a more generalist system like Drupal may suit you better.
If it's a blogging platform you are designing, then WordPress should fit you needs. You can also look into Movable Type (Perl).
If you are looking for a Content Management System (CMS), then you should look at Drupal and/or Joomla. Movable Type is actually starting to integrate with Drupal.
Wordpress has some performance issue, about a dozen pages/sec in default setup. But using plug-ins like SuperCache, it can get it to scale pretty well fairly easily. You can do anything you want with a custom "theme". But WordPress isn't going to manage the content in the "theme" for you, just display it.
If your doing a lot of User stuff then it's probably worth starting with BuddyPress instead of WordPress, you can still use a lot of WordPress plugins but it's better to start with a framework which is built to deal with a lot more users.
If you are interested in WordPress for a multi-user environment, perhaps you should look at WordPress MU, which is the software that runs WordPress.com. I'm not sure how the plugins work with WordPress MU as I've never looked at it in-depth.
If you need more of a social aspect, then you can refer to Tom's answer of using BuddyPress, which adds functionality on top of WordPress MU.
Depending on the type of User Generated content WP might work. You could use the Contributor Role to allow users to create content that site admins could then moderate before making it live.
Drupal seems to have more tools for Community type sites, but I have very little experience with it.