Volkher Hofmann recently redesigned his site and switched from Expression Engine to WordPress. First off, I should say that I met Volkher when I was a member of 9rules and he’s a stand-up guy. I mean, he’s a really great fellow. Second, this new design of his is completely awesome. I love it, in fact, it looks like something I’d design, just my style. Unfortunately, he’s quickly finding out WordPress is a spam magnet.
Regulars around here know that I have had a nasty habit in the past of switching back and forth and round about with CMS’s. I guess I just like trying new things. Either that or I’m certifiably masochistic. Honestly, I think it’s the latter more so than the former. But I’ve been on WordPress, I’ve themed for it, I’ve created sites with it. And today I sit here wondering why I ever put myself though that headache. WordPress is all hype, empty buzz.
That’s not a criticism against the people behind the software. Everyone I’ve met, everyone, has been honest, friendly and above all, generous with their knowledge and time. But the software really isn’t that spectacular. At least, not spectacular enough to warrant the insane amount of fanfare it receives. Besides the mess of raw PHP that is a template and the inane redundancies of template tags like get_archives and wp_get_archives, the most notable area WordPress falls woefully short in is comment spam.
Volkher, a man much better with words than myself, put it eloquently:
“After about three months of using WordPress, I think they better get their act together and provide one well thought-out anti-spam routine by default. Akismet, I’m sorry to say, sucks on a site like mine and if I had kept it activated, it might well have eaten the entire time I have for posting around here … and THAT is hardly the purpose of a “Blog Tool and Weblog Platform”. On top of that, all the other recommended tweaks short of turning commenting off didn’t help either.
Actually, someone who advertises his “platform” as such, should spend less time on continuously adding new features, opening new security holes, revamping the entire thing, and adding new incompatibilities almost every month. Instead, things should be halted, cleaned-up and made somewhat spam-proof. Ever since I installed WordPress on my server, I had to go through two major updates, one millennium upgrade (the jump to 2.5) and days of getting things to work.”
Why do we have a 2.5 when the thing which pisses bloggers off more than anything else, comment spam, hasn’t been adequately dealt with? Superb counter-measures exist, and Akismet isn’t it. Volkher is experiencing one of the things that keeps me running Textpattern. And if I ever leave Textpattern again it’ll be for Expression Engine. I won’t go near WordPress these days. Not with a ten-foot pole. Too much trouble, too much headache. Beautiful interface, but ugly problems.
I could possibly see WordPress being the CMS of choice for people who are well versed in PHP, or for those who want to be. But your average blogger is just barely getting a grasp on XHTML and CSS, let alone a scripting language. There is nothing, not one thing, that WordPress has over Textpattern or Expression engine. And honestly, if a person really is interested in scripting or messing with code on that level then I fully expect them to be running a CMS with balls like Django.
Sorry for the rant folks, but these are things I’ve been thinking for the past three months and I had to let it out. It’s time someone looked at WordPress with it’s fanatic following, pointed an accusing finger and said (loudly), “Look! It’s fly is open!”
27 Comments
One thing is for sure: you type faster than I do!
Thanks for the kind words. I hope all of this isn’t going to raise a stink with the Wordpress crowd.
The one thing that attracted me to Wordpress was that – with my health issues and all – I could throw a site together in a day (plus a few to stem the spam flood). I’ve tried out just about every platform for my site, Expression Engine having by far been the best, but in their forums (The Lounge) you’ll find an explanation why I abandoned it, err, had to abandon it. In short, my eye sight is somewhat down the drain and staring at endless lines of codes for hours to put something half-way decent out there just wasn’t possible for me anymore.
So, install WP, install a good theme and adapt it, tweak a couple of lines, throw in some plugins … and WoopDeeDoo … there’s a site. I haven’t seen another CMS with such a user base that allows that (if you have an idea of what you’re doing).
So, for the time being I’m a WP user. If I ever get the chance to, I’ll revert back to EE, especially when the new version comes out. They are going to have some sweeeeeeet stuff in there.
Cheers!
P.S.: Thinking of joining the new/old 9rules again? Those were the days.
So the other thing that’s relevant here is that WordPress, while primarily a blogging platform, has gained considerable traction as a general CMS. For folks who are looking for something sans a blog, I’d argue WordPress is ideal. It’s user-friendly, has more free themes and plugins than you can shake a stick at (far superior to the others mentioned herein), and clearly has the largest pool of competent, low-cost developers. If I’m developing a CMS-driven site for a client (particularly one lacking a blog), WP is choice #1. With regard to WP comment spam, I somewhat view that as a sign of success: if your platform has been targeted for spam, it’s likely because it is a widely used platform—rather analogous to why Windows gets most of the nasty viruses. This being the case, you just have to come up with good ways to control it, and over time these methods will be integrated into the WP core. I always though Dr. Dave’s Spam Karma was pretty solid, and there are myriad other ways for getting this under control.
@Volkher: Yeah, those 9rules days were sweet. These are days.
@Sidney: I disagree. The sites I’ve made with WordPress that didn’t involve a blog ended up being far more complex on the backend than they needed to be. Maybe it’s just because I’m no good at scripting from scratch ;). Textpattern is much more elegant and usable CMS for a non-blog site and from my relatively limited experience with EE, it’s better than WP too.
WordPress is marginally better at creating a quick and dirty blog, using one of the thousands of so-so themes out there as you pointed out, but that’s about it. And that’s the only reason I can think of for its success, the ease of implementing a new theme on your site even if you don’t know how to code. But when you get into the development aspect of WordPress you’ll inevitably need to either a) know PHP or b) have comfort in being limited to cutting and pasting code from the codex.
When I’ve custom made sites with WordPress I’ve always felt like I was stumbling over code to achieve my goals. With Textpattern I feel like the coding is working with me instead of against me.
I also disagree about any analogous relationship between WordPress and Windows. Viruses are a problem with windows not because of its popularity, but because of its engineering. The same is true with WordPress. Case in point is this site. openswitch has spent considerable amounts of time on WordPress as well as Textpattern. When running WordPress I get 35+ spam comments a week with 1 or 2 of them slipping through the filtering system which was made up of Akismet, Spam Karma and Bad Behavior all working at the same time. Of course, that’s not considering the time I’d spend wading through the spammy comments to find false positives. While running Textpattern my traffic levels have not changed but the comment spam is zero. None. That’s undeniable proof that WordPress, even with the “Holy Triumvirate” of spam tools falls woefully short of anything satisfactory.
Ben, I agree, totally.
Let me give one more example here. I migrated all my posts (sans two) from EE to WP. One of those posts with a Google front page search results position of place 6 (I’ve got better ones) was picked up some spamming network(s) pretty much when I put my livingwithmusic site online way back when. I already noticed with EE that the post was getting hammered, but that stopped within 30 minutes. I banned a few addresses and all the subsequent updates to the whitelist/blacklist plugin (automatically pulled from the EE main site by ways of a cron job) did not let one single one of those through anymore.
Now, on WP, that post is getting positively nuked by spam. 90% of it is hitting that post (and getting caught), but the spam is coming from all over the place. Detailed training of my anti-spam armada should prevent that soon enough, but it’s taking quite a while to sift through the deluge and determine who the culprits are. On EE I just didn’t have to look. There wasn’t any spam hitting that post anymore … at all.
I’m not saying EE is the best, but it helped me concentrate on the job at hand – posting – by removing the spam from sight and not even letting it pop up anywhere. Nada. Zip. Zilch. And since I never got one complaint about someone being unable to comment (since 2005!), I guess EE did a better job.
Or am I wrong?
Time to go to bed here. Let’s see what my defenses let through tonight.
Textpattern has a similarly simple method of banning IP’s, but I have a suspicion that EE’s is more elegant and effective. I’m not sure if WP2.5 has something like that though so I may be speaking from ignorance here.
Well, SpamKarma blacklists IPs and Domains, so it’s in there.
I’m just grateful that most spammers are too preoccupied with getting through Akismet, Spam Karma, Bad Behaviour etc. to even attempt anything with Textpattern. And I wouldn’t trade Textile for anything in the world these days
Hey Yvonne! Long time no see! I agree. Textile is the best thing to happen to my writing. Didn’t you used to be on WordPress too?
I’m thankful for the introduction to both textpattern, and expressionenguine. I’ve never heard of django either but helped me to look into it…
I see a lot of the reasons people swear by the system they use… one thing I like about wordpress is the absurd hype over it and therefore the community it has gathered…
that said blogger works just fine for me… I have a really hard time letting go of some of the design after i get it right and just writing…
that said
openswitch is purdy… well played.
Thanks for the compliment, roger. It’s not that WordPress is unusable. It’s a decent piece of software. But it’s not able to live up to the hype. That said, blogger isn’t a bad option at all when compared to wordpress.com hosted blogs.
I’m just endlessly grateful to you Ben because when you first (haha) switched to Textpattern and then you wrote about it the way you did, I started to flirt with it, and switched in a week or so, too. I read a lot of complaints about the learning curve – but haven’t experienced it. On the contrary, I was amazed at how logical everything was. And – to get to the topic here – NO spam. Zero. Nada. Without plugins! My conviction is growing stronger these days: if you need countless plugins to achieve one of the very basic stuff I expect from a CMS, it’s not worth it. I think everyone should choose the platform s/he feels comfortable with and that gives the minimum amount of headache (and that headache is oriented towards learning something new about the system, not towards solving a problem that should not be a problem at all). And the CMS that helps you why you are “here”: writing, telling the world what you think. WordPress certainly has gone a long way, and it definitely has the momentum right now – but is it really the hype what you are blogging for? That’s the question everyone should ask before choosing a platform to work with (instead of spending time to work ON it).
I think Wordpress is the target of most spammers efforts simply because it’s so widespread. The more marketshare you have, the greater a target you become.
Plugins like Akismet, Bannage, Bad Behavior and Spam Karma are invaluable in the fight against spam through WP. On my site, I’ve had over 54,000 pieces of spam caught by Akismet with very few getting missed. (And now that Akismet auto-deletes spam after 30 days, I don’t even have to bother with removing them manually.)
Ben, either I’m getting old or you’ve got a live redesign going on here.
Which is it?
Just a note: These past days I’ve had huge problems commenting here. Right now, the page wouldn’t load, yesterday I couldn’t reach the site at all (at least thrice) and when things work, they’re slow. I’ve made it a habit to copy my comments before hitting the “Preview” button … just in case.
It could, of course, also be at my “peering” end here. No idea.
Now that’s what I’d call a king-size rant.
Thanks for all the kind words re: Textpattern. You’re so awfully true. But then again, I’m biased.
Now that we’re on the topic, what actually transpired between Textpattern and Dean Allen? I know he popped up again after an extended leave, but I thought – from an outside point of view – everything seemed a bit cryptic. Are there any links about the whole “affair”? I remember reading his website before Textpattern came along and through all of this, he seems to have taken quite a “hit”. But maybe I’m exaggerating because of being ignorant about what went down?
@Volkher — Dean founded TextDrive, which later merged with Joyent (and now hosts big customers like the official Ruby on Rails site). He’s spent the past several years building a successful hosting business which took up quite a bit of his time. I think some people were disheartened by him tapering back his code contributions to Textpattern, because they saw TXP as being Dean’s baby, but the open-source community kept on with development and now TXP is stronger because of it.
There was no bad blood when he went to pursue that venture, and many Textpattern users purchased lifetime accounts with his new hosting service (I wish I had), showing their commitment to his vision, etc. Now that he’s back to blogging, you can read about his full-circle experience here…
http://textism.com/2008/04/04/alright
Hi, Nathan. Long time no, err, “see”.
Yeah, I read that piece. I also think I might have read a bit too much into it.
Cheers!
Another TXP user.
The magical mystery about the Textpattern learning curve:
WP: Install a plug-in and pray that you installed it right, that it works as expected and don’t even think about database performance.
TXP: The system out of the box is naked. Learn the template tags and esp. the if/else logic. Then use the tags like Lego bricks and built your workflow / template / design.
TXP plug-ins: Work like an extended Lego brick set.
The Textpattern learning curve is comparable to learning Lego.
That’s the magic.
Same story as Zoltan – you inspired me to switch from Wordpress to TXP after the spam got too much, Ben. And I agree, the learning curve really isn’t that bad. The fact TXP comes with so many inbuilt features which require plugins on WP (which often require numerous updates) kind of nullifies it.
Anyway, I’ll just add my thanks too and be done!
Wow. I didn’t realize my somewhat erratic CMS switching actually helped someone! HAHAHA! Great to see you ‘round these parts again though, Yvonne.
Ben, you never mention MovableType. I remember starting out on it years back before switching to WP (there was something messing up w/ my cookies over and over). I have thought of doing an install of their newest version just to see how it works these days.
And do you think a simple “preview then post” system TP has would solve issues on WP?
Maybe you’ve been spoiled by using EE or Textpattern (neither of which I have any experience with, although I did evaluate Textpattern for a non-profit’s site), but coming over from MovableType, Wordpress is a godsend, especially on the spam front. WP’s out-of-the-box Akismet functionality has blocked the vast majority of spam aimed at my site, and the ones that get through always get sent to the moderation queue. Not so with MT, where I’d spend hours wading through old posts, removing spam comments individually. Again, I haven’t used EE or Textpattern, so maybe I just don’t know how good it could be, but WP’s doing the trick for me.
@Blake: I had very limited experience with MT before switching to WordPress in 2005, and that was obviously not their newest version. I’ve installed the newest version since then on my localhost and found it’s pretty much the same as EE, only slightly harder to manage
@Ian H.: I think you’re probably right in that WordPress is a step in the right direction from Movable Type but one thing you’ll find with EE or especially with TXP is that comment spam becomes a complete non-issue. I hear you talking about “less spam” and I think to myself, “I’ve got no spam.” I’ve got no moderation queue to check, no Akismet logs to comb through for false positives either.
Part of my issue is that I build the sites for other people to use – mostly other, non-technical people. When they want something changed, the WYSIWYG text area on WP is familiar to them. I looked at TXP, and while it’s not HTML editing, there’s still some kind of markup needed. Mostly the users I create sites for just think it’s a nifty idea to have a web presence, but their most advanced computing experience is using Publisher instead of Word to put a document together. Easy wins out every time, unless I want to do all the updates myself.
@Ian: WYSIWYG for Textpattern
And do you think a simple “preview then post” system TP has would solve issues on WP?
It may. You’d have to make sure that the preview was required and not simply optional.