[wp-hackers] Removing edit theme files features

Otto otto at ottodestruct.com
Thu Jan 17 18:50:04 UTC 2013


On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 12:46 PM, Andy Charrington-Wilden
<andycharrington at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes but most site owners (who may not know about ftp etc) will more than likely be admins wont they?

Yes... And they should have the ability to edit their sites too.


On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 10:59 AM, Almog Baku <almog.baku at gmail.com> wrote:
> By my opinion-
> Developing should be done by developers.

A developer is a person who does development.

Like it or not, what you are saying are "users" are indeed people who
edit their sites, modify CSS, use PHP code snippets, etc. You can
criticize the plugin and theme editors all you like, but the bottom
line is that WordPress is a tool for building websites, and sometimes
building websites involves getting your hands dirty and editing code
as well.

Removing a feature that many people use doesn't make any sense, no
matter how "professional" you think it is. Instead of removing it, it
should have syntax highlighting, code checking on save, possibly error
detection. It should make it easier for people to tinker, play with,
and learn from.

You and I can edit our site code via an SSH connection, but a lot of
people don't have that sort of connection. And a lot of people who use
WordPress have never heard of FTP and don't know how to use it.

If somebody installs WordPress for their personal blog, and tinkers
with their editor, and breaks their site in the process, well, that
isn't a real big loss if they can continue on to fix it. Failing is
the primary method human beings use for learning.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you're using WordPress in a major
way, doing e-commerce, maybe running a blog with a million hits a day
or something major like that, then you can easily define
DISALLOW_FILE_MODS to turn the editors off completely... or just don't
give Administrator rights to people who don't need them.

-Otto


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