[wp-hackers] Making it better

[inforequest]

I can add some perspective as well that I hope is helpful. I was a programmer but have not been f/t for many years, and am casualy proficient at PHP. That means I know what I need to do but lack the skills to get many things done fast enough to be worthwhile.

One the one hand I read frequent statements and commentary, especially around the WP sites, that WP is awesome in large part because of the large number of plugins. There are numerous referrals to plug-ins as solutions to issues.

Then when I dig deep into it I find many of the plug-ins step on each other, many are known not to be compatible with 1.5, and in my research I come across comments from those "in the know" to that effect. It can certainly make one feel duped. 

For examle I find a tech note on a WP site about making a static home page, via a plug-in. It looks authoritative, and it works. Only after really spending alot of time with WP do I realize that the example takes over the loop and if I want to do anything with it, I will have to completely understand all of the code and probably re-write it differently. As this commenter says, it all seems to suggest "learn to program and you'll be fine" but it seems to be promoted as "just use the plug-ins".

It also displays an air of primadonna-ness amongsth the developers, which is never good for acceptance.









-----Original Message-----
From: 
	"Brian Dupuis wordpress-at-coldforged.org |wordpress hackers list 092004|" <...>
Sent: Apr 21, 2005 3:57 PM
To: wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com
Subject: Re: [wp-hackers] Making it better

Matthew Mullenweg wrote:

> I'm curious how the list thinks the community could be improved to 
> avoid the concerns voiced in comments like this:
>
> http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2005/04/links_for_20050421.shtml
>
I had a big long response typed up and then realized it boils down to 
the universal axiom: you can't please all of the people all of the time. 
To get up and running with a functioning blog in WordPress is typically 
a 2-step process that no one can beat. People that want to do advanced 
things with no knowledge of PHP may have a hard time. Some plugins are 
easy to use and others aren't. The support forums are incredibly helpful